Time Withers All
by Enigmatic Tathren
Summary: They say time can heal all wounds, but after being hurt time is only making things worse for Jeff Hardy. As his therapy fails and his movement is limited, the chances of him ever wrestling again look slim. Can anything be done to save his career?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the wrestlers, announcers, etc.

A/N: First off, I do apologize for where I have the wrestlers and announcers in this story. I started writing this awhile before the 2008 draft and was working on it a lot during the weekend leading up to the draft (I wrote nearly 7 pages one day, so that should tell you how much I was writing. And yes, I know that that probably wasn't a good idea). I came very close to changing all of this and making it work for the various draft changes, but I decided to leave it where I had it- wrestlers exactly where they were before the draft, but with Matt on Raw.

Also, I know NOTHING about the injuries I'm using in this story. I'm basically going off of research, but knowing me, I got everything backwards and screwed this up. Some things I did exaggerate, but please, if you know more than I do then I would love it if you could help me out a bit!

Professional wrestlers always had to deal with the various injuries that came along with the job, some more than others. Torn muscles, broken noses- they were used to these kinds of things. Jeff Hardy had always counted himself lucky that he hadn't needed to have major surgery before, despite wrestling for years. That didn't mean that he wasn't affected by his career, though. So when his back started hurting him again, he just figured it was the after effects of his latest match. He treated it like he had always treated back pain and did his best to ignore it.

His back was still bothering him when it was time for his match on Raw and for once he was glad that he was booked to lose. He wasn't sure how long he would be able to wrestle and, worst come to worst, Orton could pin him earlier to end the match. Although it was obvious that Orton suspected he was in pain, the match continued regularly, as if nothing was wrong. For awhile they were both pretty equal; one of them would gain the upper hand, only to have the other knock them down and stop their momentum.

Jeff was glad when they were nearly done with the match; his back had only been hurting worse the longer he wrestled. He quickly delivered the Twist of Fate, his back throbbing even more once he was done. The crowd was going wild, expecting the Swanton and pin from him, though that wasn't what would happen. He was going to do a Swanton, yes, but Orton would roll away and, after he got up, counter with an RKO for the win. He climbed to the top rope, the crowd screaming, and did his Swanton. However, when his back connected with the mat, a sharp pain ran down his spin and legs and he couldn't help but cry out. He tried to get up so Orton could do an RKO and somehow managed it, though he felt like he would collapse at any moment. He staggered forward, only to be hit with an RKO, as planned.

After the match he just lay there, not even bothering to try to get up. His back was throbbing and he didn't think his legs would support him again. Matt, who had been out supporting his brother, climbed into the ring and knelt next to him, with the ref on Jeff's other side. "Jeff? Jeff? Are you alright?" He asked.

"No," Jeff ground out through clenched teeth. "My… my back. There's something wrong with my back."

"Someone get a stretcher out here!" The ref yelled.

Everyone, from the crowd to the WWE staff members at ringside, waited anxiously to see what had happened. Injuries, whether planned or legitimate, always worried the people watching. The King and JR commented on what was going on, acting like they usually did during a staged injury, though they too were wondering what had happened. Finally, after a few minutes, a stretcher was brought down to the ring. Jeff was quickly lifted on to it, strapped in and carried away, with Matt walking alongside him.

As soon as they got backstage and relatively out of the way of the rest of the show, the medics got to work calling an ambulance, checking him over, and just trying to figure out what had happened. While all of this was going on, various superstars and divas had gathered around Jeff and Matt, asking questions of their own.

"Look, I know all of you are concerned for him, but if you don't stop asking him questions we will not be able to figure out what's wrong, so if all of you would please take a few steps back and stop talking, it would be a big help!" One of the medics finally snapped.

"C'mon guys, let's clear out. We'll let you know what's going on later, but right now these guys need to do their jobs!" Shane McMahon said as he walked over. The superstars and divas slowly walked away, though a few of them looked annoyed at having to leave. Only Matt stayed, though neither the medics nor Shane forced him to leave. "My dad's out there for part of the show. He'll come back when he's done," Shane told them.

The medic just nodded and turned back to Jeff. "What happened?" He asked.

"I don't know," Jeff said. "My back's been killing me for a couple of days now, but I didn't really think much of it." All of the wrestlers dealt with various aches and pains enough to not get too worried about them; the medics were used to hearing the "I didn't think much of it" line. They usually just frowned in disapproval and continued to check them over; tonight was no exception.

The medic continued to question Jeff. Was there anything else that hurt? How would he describe the pain in his back? What had he done in the past few days to treat his back pain? Jeff did his best to try to answer their questions, though it was obvious that he was getting frustrated with the lack of answers the medics had.

By the time the ambulance had arrived the medics still didn't know what the problem was, though Jeff had heard many different theories from slipped vertebrae to a simple muscle strain. He was put back on the stretcher and loaded up into the ambulance; his brother climbed in after him. A fairly large group of superstars were gathered around again, either wishing him well or just joking around a bit to try to lighten the mood.

"Listen, kid, just rest your back for a bit, okay?" Shawn said before the ambulance left. "Don't do anything stupid to risk your career. You have too many years ahead of you."

"I will if they say I have to," Jeff said. He wasn't going to take time off he didn't need to, not now when they were talking about giving him another shot at the WWE title.

Shawn opened his mouth to respond, but before he could say anything the medics swung the ambulance doors shut and finally rushed Jeff off to the hospital.

XXXXX

Going from the chaotic arena to the hospital was more than a bit of a shock. Despite the number of tests and scans being done on his back, there still weren't as many things going on as there was backstage of Raw. After the doctors and nurses had left to look at the results of their tests there was nothing for Jeff to do but sit in his bed and wait for someone to come back to tell him what the hell was going on. The only thing even remotely interesting or amusing was Matt's constant attempts to get the nurse on duty to let him in to see his brother. Yet even that got boring after awhile and Jeff finally yelled to the nurse to just let his brother in.

"You could've told her that earlier, you know." Matt flopped down in the chair next to the bed and put his feet up on the bed next to Jeff.

Jeff pushed the feet off his bed and just rolled his eyes Matt put them up there again anyway. "Why? It was the only thing happening around here," he said.

Matt suddenly became more serious. "I take it you haven't heard anything from the doctors, then?"

Jeff shook his head. "They ran 'bout a million different tests on me when I first got here, but I haven't heard anything yet."

"Did they mention anything it could be?"

"Like I said, I haven't heard anything. The medics back at Raw named a couple of things it could be, but I haven't heard anything for sure. Wonder when they're going to come back."

Matt opened his mouth to say something, but closed it immediately, muttering something that sounded like "Speak of the devil…" Jeff turned around and saw one of the doctors from earlier walking into the room. She glared at Matt and pointedly looked down at his feet, which were still on the bed. He just grinned and left them where they were.

The doctor sighed and turned her attention back to Jeff. "Hello, I am Dr. Smith. You must be…" She looked down at her clipboard. "Jeff Hardy?"

Normally he would have been thrilled to have a doctor who didn't know who he was taking care of him, but from the way that Dr. Smith was frowning at him, most likely because of his purple hair, he couldn't wait to get away from her. "Yeah, that's me," he told her. "Do you know what's wrong with my back?"

She glanced over at Matt again. "I'm sorry, but what I have to say concerns Mr. Hardy's medical condition. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Matt jumped up as if to start a fight, but Jeff leaned over and pushed him back down into the chair. "This is Matt Hardy, my brother. Whatever you say, you can say in front of him as well."

Dr. Smith looked less than thrilled at Matt staying in the room, but she finally relented. "Well, Mr. Hardy, the x-rays and the CT scan seem to indicate that you have spondylolisthesis, a slipped vertebra. The pain in your legs also seems to indicate some nerve compression; however, there is no reason to think that it is anything serious at this point." She looked down at her clipboard again. "This says that you work with the WWE for a living? What exactly does that job entail?"

Jeff could hear Matt snickering next to him. "Well, Dr. Smith, the WWE is a wrestling business."

Dr. Smith's opinion of him visibly dropped dramatically. "You wrestle for a living?" She sighed. "That would explain how you might have acquired the stress fracture that lead to this." She began writing on her clipboard. "I'm going to transfer you to a hospital near your home," she told him without looking up from her clipboard. "The doctors there will most likely start you in with physical therapy which will hopefully take care of both the slipped vertebra and the nerve compression. You'll need to take at least a couple of months off of work-"

"A couple of months?" Jeff repeated. "Look, I know you don't watch wrestling, but they're talking about giving me a title shot, there's no way I'm taking that much time off!"

To his surprise, it wasn't Dr. Smith who spoke next, but Matt. "Jeff, you are not going back to work! I may not be a doctor, but I know that a pinch nerve is a lot different than just some aches and pains. However," he turned towards Dr. Smith. "Can't he stay in his own house? Why does he have to go to another hospital?"

"Mr. Hardy, your brother will need someone with him at all times to make sure that his condition doesn't get worse, besides the fact that if there's pain in his legs I do not want him driving."

"I'll stay with him then," Matt told her.

"What?" Jeff stared at his brother. "Vince is never going to let you stay home for a couple of months!"

"Why not?" Matt asked. "We're basically in the same storyline; it would be easy to write me out. I could fake an injury or just use the truth, that I'm home taking care of you. It'll work. Besides, our next show is near home, I'll just show up for that to work out whatever they're going to do about the plot then stay home with you."

Dr. Smith cut in before Jeff could continue the argument. "If you can promise me that someone will always be taking care of him, I'll let your brother stay at his house. However, I will be alerting the hospital nearest to him about his condition and I expect you to make sure he gets the treatment he needs."

"Don't worry, I'll take care of everything," Matt promised.

True to her word, Dr. Smith let Jeff leave, after reminding them that she would be sending their information to a North Carolina hospital and giving them a note to show Mr. McMahon, explaining what needed to happen for Jeff to recover as quickly as possible.

As soon as they were outside Matt turned on his cell phone and dialed a number. Jeff couldn't hear any of the conversation; he was sitting on a bench a little ways away, since it hurt to stand for too long. However, knowing Matt he was calling someone to get a car sent over here. Sure enough, after a few minutes, he hung up and walked over to his brother.

"Hunter volunteered to drive over, since most of the others are out at local bars. He should be here in a few minutes and before you ask, no, I did not tell him what the doctor said, I'm leaving that for you." Jeff just grinned; sometimes his brother knew him too well.

Not long after that a car pulled up in front of the hospital and they could hear Hunter yelling, "Get in the car, Vince wants to talk to you ASAP!"

Jeff jumped up and would've started running over, but Matt held him back. "Doctor said nothing more than walking right now, just to be safe," he reminded him. Jeff scowled, but complied and walked slowly over to the car.

As soon as they were both in, Hunter glanced back at Jeff. "So what's the diagnosis?" He asked.

Jeff sighed. "Slipped vertebra and most likely nerve compression," he said. "The doctor wants me to take a couple of months off."

Hunter whistled softly. "Wow, that's rough. Any idea what treatment you're going to be getting?"

"Physical therapy, but I'll have to stay in a rehab center if Matt can't get time off, since apparently I'm not supposed to drive. I'm not even allowed to do anything more strenuous than walking!"

"That bad, eh?" Hunter shook his head. "Vince is not going to like both of you leaving for a couple of months, but you might be able to talk him into it, if you're lucky. Steph caught me on my way out and told me to make sure that the two of you talked to him tonight."

Hunter made sure that they were actually talking to Mr. McMahon before he left them and, like he had predicted, Vince did not take the news of them leaving very well.

"I understand why Jeff needs to leave and to be perfectly honest I wouldn't let him stay, not if he's injured. You, on the other hand…" He sighed and looked up at Matt. "I'll need to talk it over with the writers, see if there's a way to write you out of your storyline. I'll contact you before the next show to let you know if you can have the time off. You're flying back home tomorrow morning, correct?"

"Yes sir," Jeff said. "We need to leave the hotel by eight."

"Then I probably won't see either of you again before then. Jeff, you just get better as soon as you can. Matt, I'll be calling you within a few days to let you know what's going on. Goodnight."

The Hardys muttered their goodbyes and left quickly. Neither of them said anything until they reached their hotel room, when Jeff flopped down on his bed, winced slightly, and said "Well, that didn't go too bad." Matt just stared at him for a moment before he started laughing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I don't own anyone associated with the WWE, only the doctors and other OC's.**

**A/N: See first chapter for major notes about setting, injuries, title, etc. Also, I'm not going to withhold chapters if I don't get a certain number of reviews, but that doesn't mean that I don't love reading them. It's discouraging to see people looking at the story but not leaving a message.**

The start of Jeff's treatment was rough for both Hardy brothers. Jeff was restricted to two days bed rest as soon as he got home, something which aggravated him to no end. The high-flyer was used to being able to move around and do whatever he wanted; he did not like his sudden inactivity and lack of movement. While it amused Matt at first, the endless calls of "I'm thirsty" or "I want food" soon wore down his patience.

After that there were endless meetings with Jeff's new doctor, Dr. Carleson, and his physical therapist Mike Green. They needed to figure out what sort of treatments were going to use, since everyone had agreed that surgery should be avoided if at all possible. They also needed to discuss the possibility of staying in a rehab center if Matt couldn't get the time off, and on top of that was the actual therapy itself. Not only did Matt have to drive Jeff to all of these meetings, and end up being bored out of his skull for a couple of hours as he waited for them to end, he was also on edge waiting for Mr. McMahon to call.

"Man, this physical therapy thing is so pointless," Jeff complained on the way back from his first therapy session. "Do you know what they're having me do? Strengthen my back muscles! I am a professional wrestler- I already have strong back muscles!"

"Well, if Dr. Carleson says it'll help then I'm sure it will." Matt tried to keep his tone light hearted, but the effect was ruined as he sighed and looked down at his cell phone.

"Matt, he'll call eventually," Jeff said reassuringly. "Don't worry about it; I'm sure he'll give you the time off."

"And what if he doesn't?" Matt snapped. "What if he doesn't give me the time off? You'll be stuck in a rehab center while I'm on the road! How do you-" He paused, frowning, and grabbed his cell phone. "Hello?" His eyes widened. ", hello…yes…yes… I understand, sir… Seriously? Thank you, sir! Yes… yes… I will sir. Thank you!"

Matt hung up his phone and turned to face his brother. His whole face was lit up, replacing the worried, anxious look that was there before. "He gave me two months off! Vince McMahon actually gave me two months off and told me he'd negotiate more if need be!"

Jeff grinned. "That's awesome! Very un-Vince-like, but I'm not complaining. Did he tell you what they were doing about the storyline, since both of us are out?"

The smile on Matt's face faded a little bit. "Well, the details aren't completely worked out yet, so I'm not entirely sure what's going on. He said we might not even get the information until Monday. All I know is that he wants both of us on Raw."

"Woah, slow down a second, both of us? Did he say why?"

Matt shook his head. "No, like I said, the details aren't completely worked out yet." He glanced over at his brother and asked, "Why, is something wrong?"

Jeff frowned slightly and slowly shook his head. "No, no, it's just… he does remember that I'm injured, right?"

Matt let out a short bark of laughter. "This coming from the guy who didn't even want to take time off in the first place?"

"Yeah, well that was before I realized what a pain in the ass therapy is. I am not going to injure myself even more and have to put up with this for longer!" Jeff snapped, his patience quickly wearing out.

"Hey, calm down. This is Vince we're talking about. He may be tough on us- hell, he may hate us on occasion- but he wouldn't do anything to hurt someone who's already injured," Matt reassured him. "You're going to be perfectly fine on Monday. Don't worry."

Jeff knew that Matt was telling the truth. He had worked with the WWE long enough to know that they wouldn't do anything to purposefully risk him hurting himself more, but there was still always the chance that it could happen on accident; every time a superstar stepped into the ring they risked injuring themselves. Still, no amount of reassurance that he would be fine could curb Dr. Carleson's anger when he heard the news that Jeff would be appearing on Raw that week.

"Do you realize the danger you are putting yourself into?" Dr. Carleson wasn't yelling- yet. With the way he was fuming and seething, Jeff would have been very surprised if he didn't start shouting very soon.

"I'm not going to be in any danger!" Jeff repeated for what must have been the millionth time that day. "Look, Matt got another call just this morning, they have most of the details ironed out and I won't be wrestling at all. There's going to be some taunting and Matt'll beat up Orton. At most I'll just clothesline him!"

"Can you guarantee that?" Dr. Carleson asked. "Can you guarantee that once you get into the ring things won't get out of hand and you won't get hurt accidentally?" Jeff was silent; he knew that there was a chance that things would get out of control. He couldn't completely guarantee that once the yelling started, and especially the fighting, that he wouldn't do something potentially stupid without thinking it through first.

"C'mon, he's going to be fine!" Matt said, finally breaking the silence. "I mean, yeah, things can get out of hand but Jeff's not going to do anything to risk his career and I'm going to be the one doing the actual fighting. I won't let him do anything stupid. Besides, you couldn't-" Jeff quickly elbowed his brother in the side so he wouldn't finish that sentence. While it may be true that Dr. Carleson couldn't actually do anything to stop them, he just wanted to get the confrontation over and get out of there as soon as possible.

Dr. Carleson narrowed his eyes slightly, but didn't comment on what Matt was going to say. Instead, he sighed, but finally relented. "Fine, go to Raw if you must. I'll be counting on you-" he looked at Matt. "-to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid. But you're in luck; you'll never guess what I got today…"

Dr. Carleson stepped by them out of the room. When he returned, Jeff's mouth dropped open in shock and Matt looked like he was on the brink of laughter. "Oh no…" Jeff's eyes were wide open as he stared at what Dr. Carleson was holding. "Oh hell no, I am not going on Raw wearing that!"

"We agreed when we first discussed your treatment that you were going to have to wear a back brace for extra support," Dr. Carleson reminded him. "I don't care if you're going to be on national television on Monday. In fact, given what you're going to be doing I'm going to feel a lot better knowing that you're in the brace."

XXXXX

Jeff would have continued to grumble about his need to wear a back brace for the last few days leading up to Raw, but after the first couple of hours Matt started threatening him with bodily harm if he didn't shut up. They may have been close but there's only so much whining one person could take before they lost it. Still, those last few days passed without much happening besides Jeff's physical therapy, which always left him drained and annoyed at everything.

Finally Monday rolled around, bringing with it the usual physical therapy session on top of another meeting with Dr. Carleson, who spent most of the time reminding Jeff to not do anything stupid that night on Raw. However, he managed to escape without causing another huge arguement and the rest of the day passed relatively quickly.

Jeff would have preferred to stay away from the arena for as long as possible, so there would be a smaller amount of time he would be seen in the back brace. Matt, on the other hand, wanted to get there earlier so they could find out exactly what would be happening and so they would have time to go over things with Orton. In the end, Jeff won the argument by reminding Matt that they didn't need to get ready for a huge match or really go over anything before arriving there, so they arrived at the arena only slightly later than they would have under normal circumstances.

Unfortunately, their late arrival meant that nearly everyone else was already there. They ran into several of their coworkers on the way to the locker room and each time Jeff just did his best to fend off their questions "Yeah, I'm out for a couple of months… No, no surgery right now, just physical therapy and the back brace... Well, the most I can do right now is walk; Matt has to chauffer me around…"

Then the person shifted their attention to Matt and it was his turn to try to answer all of the questions. "No, I got two months off to deal with Jeff… Well, otherwise he'd be staying in a rehab center… The most I know is that there's going to be some sort of confrontation with Orton… No, I don't know anything more than that…"

After this, the conversation would end with wishes for Jeff's speedy recovery. At first Jeff was touched at his coworkers' well-wishes, but after repeating the same conversation again and again and again all Matt and Jeff wanted to do was get to the locker room as fast as possible before going to find out exactly what they were supposed to be doing that night. When the shouts of "Matt! Jeff!" echoed down the hallway the Hardys wanted to do nothing more than just keep walking and ignore them, but they did stop and turn around, to see Cena running towards them.

"We've had this conversation a million times, do you just want the shortened version of the information or do you actually want to ask the questions first?" Jeff was only half-joking; he wouldn't mind just giving the information and then getting to leave, despite the fact that he was on pretty good terms with the WWE champion.

"Shortened version if you don't mind, you two need to go find Vince; he said something about going over a change in the script for tonight," Cena told them.

"Wait, slow down a second a change in the script?" Matt asked. "What're they changing? I just thought they were going to iron out some details, not change things around!"

"Calm down, I think it's just a small change for Jeff, nothing major."

Jeff frowned. "What kind of small change? I thought I wasn't going to be doing much of anything, not with my back the way it is…"

"I don't think the change had anything to do with you fighting," Cena reassured him. "Though now that you mention is, how is your back? I heard both of you are taking a couple of months off- is that true?"

"Yeah, it's true; Amazingly, Vince gave Matt some time off so I don't have to stay in a rehab center, since the most I can do is walk," Jeff said. "And my back and legs are pretty sore most of the time, especially after physical therapy, but hey, if it helps I'm not complaining."

Cena smiled sympathetically. "Yeah, physical therapy can be brutal," he told him. "But what's wrong with your back exactly? Some of the guys are saying it's a vertebrae problem, is it really?"

Jeff just nodded. "Slipped vertebra. They think the leg pain is nerve compression though, but they're hopeful that the physical therapy will just take care of that too. I still need to wear this damn brace for support though." He tapped a knuckle against his brace to emphasize his words.

"Listen, you just rest up that back of yours, okay? It won't do you any good to injure it even more than it already is."

"Yeah, I know," Jeff said. "As much as I hate to cut this short, Matt and I should probably go find Vince, see what that change is."

After they all said their goodbyes, Matt and Jeff all but ran to find Mr. McMahon. They reached his office after a few minutes and, after knocking and receiving permission to come in, entered the office to talk to the chairman of the WWE. He looked up as they opened the door. "Ah, good, I was hoping you'd stop by soon."

"We ran into Cena on the way over here and he told us you wanted to talk about a change in the script for tonight."

"Well, it's really only a small change. You see, the writers really want to emphasize your injury, make it seem like its more career-threatening than it actually is," Mr. McMahon explained. "The brace was good-" Jeff scowled at the mention of the brace, but remained silent "-however, we feel that we needed something that would make more of an impact."

He motioned to the back corner of his office and both brothers turned around to see what was there. Their reactions were nearly identical to when Jeff's brace was brought out- Jeff was in shock and Matt looked like he was about to start laughing. "You want me in a wheelchair? Mr. McMahon, you can not be serious!" Jeff said.

"Oh, I am serious," Mr. McMahon assured him. "Orton's going to call back to have one or two of our employees wheel you out and put you in the ring- feel free to struggle with them a bit, by the way. When the fight starts you can get out of the chair, but play up the injury- make it seem like it hurts to stand up, collapse after punching him- that sort of thing." Mr. McMahon looked down at his watch. "You're going to be out first and the show is starting in ten minutes, so I suggest you get ready to go out."

Jeff glared at his boss and silently left the room while Matt muttered a goodbye, grabbed the wheelchair, and ran after him. "Jeff, c'mon, calm down a bit, it's just a wheelchair, it's not a big deal…"

Jeff spun around and glared at his brother. "Not a big deal? Do you want to go out to the ring the wheelchair then?" He shook his head. "Emphasize my injury… man, this is just going to be embarrassing! I can't go out there in a wheelchair!"

"You don't really have much of a choice!" Matt said. "Look, I know it sucks. Hell, I wouldn't want to be the one in the wheelchair, but what are you going to do about it? Everything's planned around this, there isn't time to change it. We'll just go out there, do our thing, and it'll be over before soon enough." He paused for a moment to grin at his brother. "Besides, you don't want to let the fans down, do you?"

Jeff glared at Matt. Both of them knew that as soon as the fans were mentioned, Jeff would do anything. He loved performing for the fans; he would always give it his all and do his best to make sure they were satisfied, even if that meant sitting in the damn wheelchair. He scowled at his brother and looked away. "Fine," he muttered. "Let's just get this over with."

Orton had just started talking when they arrived in the gorilla position. Jeff sat down in the wheelchair, still scowling, and watched Orton on one of the nearby TV's. "I've put your precious Jeff Hardy out for good," he was saying. "Your little high-flying hero can barely walk after what I did to him last night!" A clip of the end of their match played, complete with Jeff being taken out on the stretcher; by the time the clip ending the crowd was booing Orton again. "What? You don't believe me? Well come on, bring him out then, so everyone can see what I did to him!"

That was the cue. Two men dressed like security guards grabbed Jeff's wheelchair, with each one holding onto a handle. As Jeff's music started playing they wheeled him out. At first, when the music first came on, the crowd was deafening, but as Jeff was pushed down the ramp, the cheers slowly began to die down as everyone stared at him in complete shock. Jeff wanted nothing more than to scream that he was fine but he had to follow the script for that night. Still, Mr. McMahon had said that he could fight the security guards and he did to the best of his ability, considering how limited his movement was with both the brace and the wheelchair, all while yelling about how he didn't want to be wheeled out there.

However, despite his genuine efforts to beat the two men away, it wasn't long before they reached the ring. One of them held out his arm and Jeff, remembering that he wasn't supposed to be able to stand, slowly and shakily stood up and leaned on it, though he was still scowling at the whole situation. Meanwhile the other man put the chair into the ring. Then, for the first time in his life, Jeff Hardy was helped into the ring and sat down in the wheelchair once more. He took the microphone that was passed to him as Orton began speaking again.

"I told you I wasn't lying!" He said. "I told you he could barely walk and here he is, stuck in a wheelchair! So tell me, Hardy, how does it feel to go from one of the top superstars on Raw to not even being able to support yourself?" He ignored the crowd's boos and continued talking. "Yeah, that's right, your brother is sacrificing his career to look after you! I bet that doesn't sit well, does it? The Hardy brothers, reduced to nothing!"

"Man, just shut the hell up!" Jeff finally said. "First off, don't act like you know what you're talking about and don't you dare talk about Matt that way. You know nothing about us or about what's going on right now, nothing."

Randy Orton suddenly lashed out at Jeff, his eyes blazing with mock-anger. He knocked Jeff out of the wheelchair, effectively starting the fight, though with Jeff having to act like he was more injured than he really was, it wasn't really much of a fight. Still, the crowd was going wild and to Jeff that was really all that mattered. Not long after the 'fight' started, the crowd's cheers got even louder and Jeff knew that his brother had finally arrived. Sure enough, Matt soon slid into the ring and began fighting Orton himself.

Jeff was acting like the ropes were the only thing supporting him as he watched his brother essentially fight his battle for him. He waited for the right opportunity to come forward and end the fight, like what was originally planned. That opportunity came sooner than he thought, with Orton throwing his brother over the top rope and out of the ring. As he turned back around, Jeff let go of the ropes and threw himself at Orton, knocking him on his back.

That should've been the end of the match; there weren't any plans beyond that point, except for Matt helping Jeff back up the ramp. However, those plans didn't take into account Jeff's anger at being forced into a wheelchair for most of the confrontation. He wasn't going to be content with just watching from the sidelines and getting one good punch on Orton. He staggered to his feet, leaning on the ropes again so the storyline wasn't ruined too much. He undid his back brace and threw it down in the ring before climbing through the ropes and standing by one of the corners.

The blood pounding in his head drowned out any other noise- the crowd, JR, The King… everyone. His eyes were fixed on the top turnbuckle, his ultimate goal that night. Slowly, still partially attempting to act like he was severely injured, he began to climb up onto the turnbuckles. He reached the top one and remained crouched for a moment, 'supporting' himself with the ropes. Orton was staring at him with a look of horror on his face, but didn't move. No one tried to stop him or interfere with whatever he was going to do; no one wanted to risk accidentally hurting him even more.

By this time Matt had gotten up and was yelling at his brother to get down, but Jeff didn't hear him. Jeff let go of the ropes and slowly, very slowly, stood up to his full height. He didn't stop to think about what would happen next. His blood was still pounding and he was still pissed. He needed this outlet, screw the consequences. He raised his arms, complete with his hand sign, like he usually did before the Swanton. Then, just for a brief moment, the pounding died down and he heard everything- the crowd going wild as they realized what he was going to do, the announcers too shocked to actually act like it was planned, but still yelling out what was happening, and Matt yelling at him to get down before he hurt himself even more.

Jeff looked down at his brother for a brief moment. He may have been doing this out of anger, but it was also partially to show his brother that he wasn't helpless. That he didn't need to sacrifice anything to be with him, that he could fight his own battles. Orton's words earlier had stung, since part of him knew that he had been telling the truth; Matt may very well have been sacrificing at least part of his career to take care of him.

He looked away from his brother and, without another thought, leapt off the top turnbuckle, the screams from everyone around him following him on his way down.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I only own the OC's, no one else.**

**A/N: Well, I had typed up these next few chapters on my laptop since I was on vacation. Unfortunately, my laptop's hard drive fried and I lost them. I'm in the process of retyping them, so the updates will be a bit farther apart. As always, see the first chapter for major author's notes.**

The last time Jeff did a Swanton onto Randy Orton was nowhere near as painful as it was this time. He screamed and rolled off of Orton before his mind could comprehend the fact that moving was probably not a good idea at that moment. He stifled another scream and lay in the ring, trying not to move a muscle. The crowd, which had been louder than ever as he prepared to do his Swanton, was now slowly starting to quiet down as everyone waited to see what was wrong with Jeff. The only people who were still talking were JR, King, and Matt.

Matt had climbed into the ring as soon as Jeff landed on Orton and knelt next to his brother. He looked lost as to what to do, unsure whether or not it was safe to move Jeff or even to touch his back without causing him pain, but more than that he looked completely furious- not that Jeff could really blame him. Right behind Matt were the medics, none of which looked too pleased at having to deal with Jeff and his back for the second week in a row. "You didn't learn last time, did you?" The medic muttered angrily. "This week you even knew you were injured and you still went and did this! Come on, let's get him onto the stretcher!" Within no time Jeff was loaded onto the stretcher and brought backstage.

Jeff knew that the medic was not going to be the last person to yell at him that night. As soon as he was backstage and away from the cameras it seemed like everybody on the roster had come to give him a piece of their mind.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

"That could have been the end of your career out there, Hardy!"

"Did you even stop to think about what you were doing?"

"What made you think that would even be a good idea in the first place?"

He began to tune out his coworkers' comments, not out of rudeness or boredom but simply because it hurt to hear what they were saying. He knew what they were saying was true- he didn't stop to really think about what he was doing and he knew that he may have just ended his career. Right now he wanted nothing more than to just go home and try to forget what he did that night, but there were still a couple of people that needed to throw their two cents in before he could even leave the arena.

"What the hell where you thinking out there?" There was no mistaking that voice; it seemed like Vince McMahon, had finally showed up to chew him out. "Do you even realize that that may very well have been the last time you step foot in a ring? You put your career on the line and I hope you're ready to live with that decision! I can't risk having you by the ring again, so you are banned from all WWE shows, both as a wrestler and a spectator, until that back of yours is completely healed- _if_ it ever heals!"

Mr. McMahon stormed off after he was done with his speech, leaving Jeff to mull over what he said. He didn't care too much about being banned from WWE events, since he knew that he could've ended up with a punishment that was a lot worse than that. Still, his words hurt more than the rest of the wrestlers' did; Vince had made it seem like he thought that Jeff would never be able to wrestler after the stunt he had just pulled.

"Don't let him get to you." Jeff had to grin when he heard the voice; of course Shawn would have to talk to Jeff about what he did. "But, you know, he is right. You risked your career by pulling that stupid stunt when you knew you were injured."

"I know Shawn, it's just… I don't know. I wasn't really thinking out there tonight."

"And that's where the problem lies," Shawn said. "You've seen so many people come back from injuries, hell, even wrestle with injuries, that it doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore. Then everyone's telling you to calm down and you can't do this or that and you just snap and do something stupid." Jeff just nodded as Shawn continued. "But take it from someone who's broken their back before- this isn't the type of thing you can just rebound from after a surgery. It's gonna take time and it's gonna hurt, but you're better off than I was. If you stop doing more damage to your back, I don't see any reason why you can't come back to wrestle. Just take it easy, alright kid? Trust me, when you're at the height of your career it's not fun to have it stopped."

"Don't worry, after tonight I don't think I'm going to be doing much of anything for awhile," Jeff told him with a small grimace.

Shawn laughed. "But last week you told me that you wouldn't do anything stupid and well, look at how well that turned out."

"Hey, I hope I'm not interrupting anything, but the ambulance is here and they want to take Jeff to the hospital ASAP to see how much damage was done tonight," Matt said as he walked over to the two of them.

"No, you aren't interrupting anything," Shawn said. "I was just giving your brother a bit of advice."

"You mean telling him not to do anything stupid again?" Matt was grinning slightly as he spoke. It was still obvious that he was as angry as he had been in the ring, but there was something else there as well, though Jeff couldn't quite pinpoint what it was. Still, he'd find out soon enough, since Matt could never quite hide his emotions from his brother when they fought and considering what he had done that night, Jeff knew that an argument was unavoidable.

Shawn nodded. "Well, I'll let them take you out of here then," he said. "And remember what I said, kid. You have too many years left in this business."

"I won't forget it," Jeff told him. "And believe me, I'm not lying this time when I tell you that I won't be pulling stunts like that anytime in the near future."

Jeff had half-hoped that his brother would just start yelling at him on the way to the hospital. He didn't care if the paramedics heard whatever he had to say, he just wanted to get everything over with so he could just deal with Dr. Carleson and go home. Matt seemed to have an entirely different plan and he remained completely silent for the entire trip. The silence didn't last long after that, though, since once they reached the hospital Dr. Carleson had a few things to say to his patient.

"Do you even realize what you did to your back out there?" Dr. Carleson's voice was a hair away from being a full-out yell. "Your vertebra slipped even further and judging by the amount of pain you were in when you first got here there's more nerve compression than before as well! We're going to need to completely rework your therapy and if you can get through this without surgery it's going to be a miracle. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if you screwed up your back so bad you never wrestled again!"

There it was again, the slap in the face that, though he had heard it a million times that night, he would never be comfortable with. Everyone phrased it differently but the general message was exactly the same. _You will never wrestle again. _Dr. Carleson, Vince McMahon, hell, even most of the Raw roster had expressed their doubts at his return to wrestling; it wouldn't even surprise him if Matt said something similar when he finally snapped at him. The only person who had any faith in him was Shawn Michaels, but when everyone else doubted him, that one vote of confidence didn't really seem to make a difference.

It took Jeff a moment to realize that Dr. Carleson was still talking and he quickly tried to pay attention again. "… I'm sorely tempted to put you in a rehab center so I know you won't do anything to mess up your back even more. However, I have a feeling that you won't do anything stupid anyway, so I'm letting you go home as long as you promise me to keep that brace on at all times. And Matt,-" he turned to face the older Hardy brother, his voice becoming slightly icier as he addressed him. "-this time, can you please try a bit harder to watch out for your brother?"

Jeff was expecting his brother to claim that it wasn't his fault that Jeff had done what he did, or insist that he had done everything he could to stop him earlier that night. To his surprise the only thing he heard was "Yeah. I'll try." Jeff stared at his brother, wondering what had gotten into him. He had already passed up a number of chances to chew him out, he was unusually calm and subdued- this wasn't the Matt Hardy he knew. Even when they were out of the hospital and waiting for someone to bring their car over from the arena he was silent. The ride back home was tense, awkward, and silent. Finally it reached the point where Jeff just couldn't take it anymore.

"Damnit Matt, say something already!" Jeff yelled. "I am sick of you just sitting there and not saying or doing anything! I know you're pissed at me, so why don't you just tell me how much I screwed up tonight so we can move on?"

"Fine, you want me to yell at you, tell you how I felt tonight out in the ring?" After a nod from Jeff he continued. "Do you know what I went through out there tonight? I had supposedly just taken a horrible fall over the top rope, so I'm lying on the outside of the ring, on the opposite side as you. As I'm lying there I hear the crowd yelling and JR and King are screaming and I can make out your name but I don't know what's going on. I finally get to my feet and the first thing I see is your back brace lying in the center of the ring and it hits me- you're going to do a Swanton, like you always do. By the time I get around to where you are you're already standing on the top turnbuckle, playing up to the crowd, and I don't know if I can get you down without hurting you.

"Then as you're standing up there you look down at me and I know that somehow, in some twisted way, you're doing this for me or because of me, whether to prove something or out of revenge I have no idea. Then you jump off and I swear my heart stopped as I watched you fall and land on your back. You're screaming and in pain, but I still can't do anything for you and it's driving me completely crazy. At first I was furious at you for doing something so stupid, but then everyone's telling you that you risked your career and you could never wrestle again and I realize that it's my fault. I was supposed to protect you out there tonight and I couldn't and now your career may be over because I screwed up, or because you felt you had to do it for me- it doesn't matter because it still comes down to the fact that it's my fault."

Jeff was stunned. It explained everything- the strange emotion in his eyes earlier, his subdued manner with Dr. Carleson- but he didn't know how Matt could blame himself and he was quick to tell him that. "Matt, it's not your fault. There's no way in hell it could be your fault! I was the one who was stupid enough to do a Swanton with an injured back. Besides, I'm old enough to make my own choices; you don't have to be looking out for me all the time…"

Matt just shook his head as Jeff continued his angry speech. He doubted his brother would ever understand that it actually was his fault. Mr. McMahon had only okayed the confrontation because he had thought that Matt would make sure Jeff wouldn't do anything stupid. Then he nearly had to talk his brother into going along with it in the first place- not to mention the only reason they got Dr. Carleson to stop bothering them about it was because Matt had promised to look out for Jeff. He could do his best to try to convince Matt otherwise, but it still came down to the fact that what had happened was his fault and nothing would ever change that.

It was late by the time that they got home and they both opted to just go to bed right away. Jeff had looked completely exhausted as he staggered up towards the house, so Matt assumed that he had fallen asleep right away. Matt wished he could fall asleep as easily as his brother, but he just couldn't. He tossed and turned for awhile before finally deciding that it just wasn't worth it. He got up and turned on his laptop. When everything was done loading he signed into his Myspace account, knowing that the perfect way to kill time was to write a new blog; besides, his fans would want to know what was going on with him and Jeff, especially after that night's episode of Raw.

_Hey guys and gals. I don't know how many of you caught Raw tonight, but there are a few things I would like to clear up. First off, it is true that I am going to be taking time off to take care of Jeff, since he did injure his back last week on Raw. Right now we're both fine physically. Jeff's Swanton damaged his back more than it was before, but the doctor thinks that it should heal fine. _Matt figured that telling a small white lie like that wouldn't be a problem.

_Emotionally we're more than slightly worn out. Jeff's had Mr. McMahon, his doctor, and several of our coworkers yell at him about the Swanton. And let me tell you, watching your brother do a possibly career-ending move and not being able to stop him isn't exactly a walk in the park, not to mention the fact that Jeff and I weren't on the same page on the ride back from the hospital. However, everything is worked out and there's no reason why both Jeff and myself shouldn't be back in the ring in a couple of months. _Again, another small lie; there were plenty of reasons why they would be gone for longer than that, in fact it was highly likely that they would be gone for longer than that, but he didn't see any harm in ignoring that point.

_I'll try to update this often to let you guys know what's going on and to give you a more definitive timeline for our return to the WWE. Now, however, it's definitely time for me to crash. Adios, and thanks for all the support._

Despite the fact that his blog was relatively short, enough time had passed to make Matt genuinely tired and he honestly did want to go to sleep now. However, for the first time he wasn't happy with the blog he had just posted. He had lied to his fans on a number of occasions, but he was usually fairly honest with them; it didn't sit well with him that he had to leave out several large parts of what had really happened that night. Still, he had told them everything he could, but part of him disagreed, making him question his reasons for excluding the part where the events of that night were his fault.

Did he leave that part out because it was too personal to share, or because he didn't want his fans to chew him out?

He sighed, and shut down his laptop. It wouldn't do any good to second guess himself now. What was done was done. Now, he just had to live with his mistake and hope that he didn't screw up again; he didn't know if he could deal with ruining his brother's life anymore.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I don't own any wrestlers, WWE officials, etc.**

**A/N: So, sorry for the bit of the delay. I went on vacation again, but I was busy this time, so I didn't have as much time to work on the story as I did before. I apologize for the poorer quality of this chapter, it was horrible to try to write it out and it still didn't come out as good as I would have hoped. **

Neither Matt nor Jeff brought up their conversation on the ride home from the hospital again. In fact, Jeff's stunt may have easily been forgotten, for the most part, except for two small things. The first was simply the sheer amount of phone calls from friends and family, and letter from fans, frantically asking about Jeff's stunt on Raw- _Was the Swanton planned? How injured is he? Is he still able to wrestle?_ The two of them continually answered the same questions as person after person called to ask how Jeff was.

The second reminder Swanton was the simple fact that Jeff was still in a considerable amount of pain. Despite the fact that he was too proud admit it, it was obvious to anyone who knew him well that he was not capable of doing the things he used to be able to do. Matt had a feeling that his brother was still in quite a bit of pain, but it wasn't until he saw the prescribed medication that Jeff had been trying to hide that his suspicions were confirmed. He didn't say anything though; if Jeff didn't want him to know then he wouldn't bring it up. Besides, he told himself, most of the pain was probably from the intense physical therapy sessions than anything else. Jeff would be fine after a little while; there was no reason to worry right now.

Still, it took awhile for the brothers to adjust to living with the other; they were used to having their own houses where they weren't constantly bumping into the other at every turn. They needed to completely readjust their routines so they could work around the other without any problems. On top of that there were several things that sparked arguments between the two of them. Most of these were largely insignificant, such as Matt's habit of playing loud music early in the morning or Jeff taking over a room in the house as a temporary studio.

Some of the arguments were over more major things, such as the ongoing discussion about how much Matt was allowed to help Jeff while he was injured. Jeff insisted he could do everything by himself, but Matt wanted his brother to rest more so his back was under less stress. After fighting it out- verbally, of course, though Jeff did throw one good punch at his brother- they found settled on a good comprise and moved on.

These incidents were usually never spoken of again, and were simply added to the growing collection of topics that Matt and Jeff had silently agreed to never bring up. There was one, and only one, exception to this unspoken rule, oddly enough, it involved wrestling.

"Why aren't you watching Raw?" Matt asked as he sat down on the couch next to Jeff a week after his infamous Swanton.

Jeff continued channel surfing as he answered. "I don't want to."

"Why not?" Matt couldn't figure out why his brother wouldn't be watching Raw. Wrestling had been their life for so long he had just assumed his brother would want to at least try to keep up with what was happening in the business.

"Because I just don't want to!" Jeff snapped. "Do I need a reason?"

"Yes, you do! You've practically lived and breathed this business for I don't know how many years; it's just not like you to not even want to try to keep up with what's going on."

"Did you ever stop to think that maybe I don't want to be reminded of the fact that I can't wrestle?"

_Oh, _Matt thought. _I should've known. _Part of Matt wanted to respect his brother's wishes and not bother him about watching Raw, since he still felt like he had caused enough pain already, but he knew that in the long run this wouldn't do anything to help Jeff. "You can't avoid wrestling forever, you know," he said softly.

"Why not?" Jeff's practically yelling now. He had spent the past week reliving his mistake over and over again when all he wanted to do was try to forget what had happened. He was angry at himself for what he did, frustrated with the lack of noticeable improvement in his back, and depressed as all hell at the thought of possibly never wrestling again. "Why do I have to watch Raw or Smackdown or even ECW? Maybe I don't want to watch it because I don't _want_ to wrestle again! Did you ever think of that?"

"We both know that's a lie." Matt didn't know how he was remaining calm, but somehow he managed to keep his voice quiet and his emotions under control, despite the voice in his head that was screaming that his was his fault his brother was thinking like that. "Wrestling has always been your dream. You're not just going to give it up."

Jeff snorted. "What does it matter, anyway? It's not like I'm going to be able to wrestle again!" If he had actually been paying attention to his brother he would've noticed Matt's slight flinch at his words, but he was so absorbed in his own emotions that Matt's reaction didn't even register.

"That's not true."

"Isn't it? My back is completely screwed up, Matt, or didn't you notice that?"

Matt didn't answer right away, as he tried to stop his brother's words from getting to him. Finally, after a few moments of silence, he spoke again. "If you really want to return to the ring you could. It won't be easy, but it's not impossible." He paused for a moment before continuing. "Besides," he glanced over at his brother. "I never thought you'd be a quitter."

Jeff whipped his head away from the TV and glared at Matt, his eyes narrowed slightly. "I am _not_ a quitter!" He said hotly as he began going through the channels again.

Matt chuckled and said quietly, almost to himself, "Sure you aren't… Try channel 43." He said the last part loud enough for Jeff to hear him.

Jeff scowled but listened to his brother anyway and quickly turned to the suggested channel. Less than a second after he changed the channel he stiffened slightly, his eyes widening as he saw who was standing in the ring. Randy Orton. It wasn't that he was afraid of Orton, but he had forgotten that he would be talking about how "he" took out the Hardys- which would mean being reminded not only of his initial injury but his Swanton from last week.

"Two weeks ago on Raw I destroyed Jeff Hardy's back in my match against him." The start of Orton's speech was nearly drowned out by the boos from the crowd. Several different chants started up in different sections of the crowd, which only contributed to the overall noise. "Shut up!" Orton yelled and, surprisingly, most of the chants did quiet down.

"As I was saying, I destroyed Jeff Hardy's back two weeks ago on Raw, but the funny thing is it was Hardy himself who did the most damage!" The clip of Jeff's Swanton from last week began to play and, though neither of them wanted to relive that moment, they watched the recap anyway.

For the first time Jeff saw a glimpse of what Matt had told him on their way back from the hospital the week before. He could clearly see the panicked look on his brother's face and hear him screaming for him to just get down. He looked away from the TV, not wanting to finish watching the scene. He felt horrible for having put Matt through that and for being the cause of him having to take time off. He silently swore that somehow he would make up to Matt. Somehow, he would repay Matt for everything he put aside to help him.

Matt, on the other hand, couldn't look away. He stared at the screen, watching and reliving what had happened last week. _Where did I screw up?_ He wondered. _What could I have done to stop this?_ He watched every second of it, the now-familiar feeling of guilt bubbling up inside him again. _I'll never ruin your career again, Jeff. I swear to God I will never do anything to ruin your life again. _

Luckily, it wasn't long before the recap finished playing and the cameras moved back to Orton. The crowd was booing louder than they were before and Randy smirked slightly at the noise. "What's even better than that is that not one but _both_ of the Hardys are gone! Matt's left to care for little Jeffery and I think it's safe that we won't be seeing-"

Randy was cut off by the opening lines of "Sexy Boy" echoing throughout the arena. If he wasn't so busy wondering why the hell Shawn Michaels was coming out, Jeff would've marveled at the crowd's ability to change moods so quickly and their amazing lung power. One moment they were completely filling the arena with their boos, the next they were chanting "HBK" and were louder than they had been all night.

"Now, I'm not one for coming out here and calling people liars," Shawn said. "But I remember things happening a bit differently then how you're telling them."

"Is that so?"

"See, the way I remember things you had nothing to do with it. He was injured after missing a Swanton, then by his own actions- neither of which were because of you."

"That's not important! Hardy is still gone from the WWE!"

"See, I don't think that's quite true either. There was someone else who returned after a back injury and I can't quite remember the name… it's on the tip of my tongue…" Shawn paused for a few moments, acting like he couldn't remember the name. "That's right. Me."

"This isn't about you, though!" Orton yelled. "Besides, just because you came back doesn't mean he will! Hardy is _gone_!"

"You know, I'm getting rather tired of hearing him say that," Jeff commented.

"Shut up, I want to find out what's going on."

Shawn had started speaking again. "So what you're saying is that I'm wrong and you're right?"

"That's right!"

"But I'm saying that _you're_ wrong and _I'm_ right," Shawn continued. "Of course, in the WWE, there's only one way to solve a problem like this and I believe there's a pay-per-view coming up soon…"

The second interruption came that night in the form of Chris Jericho. "Wait just a minute!" he yelled. "Shawn, I'm not done with you yet! If anyone should fight you at the pay-per-view, it should be me!"

"He challenged me to a match first!"

Shawn spoke before Jericho could respond. "Well, this won't work. I can't fight both of you at the pay-per-view." He paused. "Actually I could, but I'm not going to. So how about instead, you two fight each other tonight and the winner gets to face me?

"Fine," Jericho spat. "But Orton, that match is _mine._ So tonight, you'd better watch out, because I will win- no matter what."

Jeff continued to stare at the TV long after Raw had gone to commercial. "That has got to be one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen!" He finally said. "Was it that strange when I was defending you after you were attacked?"

"Not really," Matt replied. "But that's because it was you and not Shawn Michaels. That storyline made a bit more sense then this one. Still," he grinned slightly and glanced over at Jeff. "Aren't you glad you're watching wrestling now?"

Wrestling became the only time during the week when the two brothers could really relax. Those too-few hours allowed them to temporarily forget that Jeff's therapy didn't seem to be working, while the tense atmosphere caused by too many arguments and too much anger seemed to dissipate. It was ironic, really, that the show that had unintentionally caused the entire situation would be the same show that would grant them an escape for two hours at a time. The brutal physical therapy sessions and lack of information, from Dr. Carleson were pushed to the back of Jeff's mind during Raw and Smackdown.

Outside those few hours, though, the tension and worry would return. Jeff continued to remain silent about any pain he was been in. He wouldn't talk about how his therapy was going, leaving Matt frustrated and forced to guess what was going on. Even Jeff, though, didn't always know what was happening. Dr. Carleson had started avoiding answering his questions, responding only with vague answers and unhelpful comments.

Even Shawn beating Jericho at the pay-per-view and moving on to feud with Orton couldn't chase away the fear that was starting to consume Jeff. He knew something wasn't right with his therapy and the lack of definitive answers only worried him more. The only thing he knew was that he shouldn't have been in so much pain, but even then he didn't know what that _meant_. Still, he did his best to hide it from Matt. He had put his brother through so much already; he didn't want to worry him about anything else.

He knew he couldn't keep the pain from his brother forever though, especially not after it became harder and harder to do simple tasks. It hurt to walk and it hurt to stand, making physical therapy nearly unbearable and just walking across the room a chore. Finally, the day came when he couldn't hide it any longer.

"Jeff, Raw's about to start!" Matt yelled to his brother, who was in his room upstairs. "You gonna come down?"

There was a brief paused before Jeff appeared, stopping to rest against his doorframe. He was panting heavily and he was shaking from the effort of trying to stay upright. "I don't know if I can," he admitted before his legs gave out and he collapsed on the ground.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I don't own any of the wrestlers or WWE officials. **

**A/N: So, I've been planning this out and, as far as I can tell, there's only going to be two chapters left, but there is going to be a sequel (and a sequel to that- it's a trilogy, folks), just so you know. **

"Jeff! Jeff!" Matt yelled as he sprinted up the stairs to where his brother was lying and knelt down next to him. "Are you okay? What happened?" A million different possibilities and explanations were running through his head but at the forefront of everything was the question that had been there since the start of the whole mess: _Was there anything I could've done to prevent this?_

"Don't worry, I'm fine." Jeff tried to act unworried and calm, which was an incredibly hard thing to do when one was collapsed on the floor, panting from the effort of trying to stand, and still shaking. "I'm fine," he repeated.

"No, you're not," he said. "You cannot honestly tell me that you're "fine" when you just collapsed trying to walk out of your room. Now what's wrong?"

Jeff sighed, but complied and answered Matt. "My back, as usual," he muttered. "What else would be wrong?"

Matt rolled his eyes and tried not to look too annoyed with his brother. "Jeff, there are a million things that could've caused this besides your back, so work with me here. Act like I don't know anything and start over at the beginning."

"Well let's see, about five weeks ago on Raw I injured my back after having done a Swanton, but prior to this I had been feeling pain in my lower back for a couple of days," Jeff began. "I'd been ignoring the pain though, since I just assumed it was regular old back pain. I mean, c'mon Matt, we're wrestlers, of course I didn't assume it was anything serious."

"You know, we really should work on getting the others to move away from that mentality," Matt interrupted. "I mean, with our line of work it's pretty stupid to just assume that it's always going to be 'nothing'. And for the record, I did not want you to start at the literal beginning."

"Yeah I'll just tell Vince to start pounding that in their skulls the next chance I get." Jeff's voice was dripping with sarcasm, but a slight grin was starting to spread across his face as he purposely ignored Matt's last statement. "So what did we have the weekend before I injured my back- a house show, a signing, and a day off? It was something like that. Anyway, I assumed that I was just sore after the house show and then I thought that maybe my back just ached from sitting in a folding chair all day and I worked out the next day so I thought that maybe that was why it was hurting. By the time that Monday came around my back was still sore but I couldn't really back out of my match at this point-"

"What are you talking about? They wouldn't have made you fight if you weren't feeling well!" Matt interrupted his story for the second time that night.

"That's not the point, the fans were expecting me to wrestle and I couldn't let them down."

"Couldn't let them down or wouldn't, Jeff?"

"That's not important…" Jeff muttered. _Though he's the exact same way most of the time_, he thought to himself. He quickly continued the story so his brother couldn't harass him about his dedication to the fans anymore. "So I went down to my match and fought Orton. By the time I hit him with the Twist of Fate my back was absolutely killing me, but I went up for the Swanton anyway. He rolled out of the way, I hit the mat, and there was this burst of sharp pain in my lower back. You know all of this- I got hit with the RKO, you panicked, medics came out, questions, bothersome coworkers, more questions, etc. and finally we get shipped off to Dr. Smith.

"Not exactly the most pleasant woman in the world, is she?"

"No, now shut up. Anyway, we went to see Dr. Carleson and he didn't want me to have surgery 'cause he thought my back could heal just fine with therapy and the brace. So I was starting physical therapy when you got that phone call from Vince saying that both of us needed to be on Raw, which was more than slightly worrying, but I went anyway, against Dr. Carleson's wishes."

"Can you skip ahead to the parts I don't know?"

"You were the one who wanted the story in the first place!" Jeff yelled

"That was before I knew that you were just going to be retelling everything I was there for!"

"Fine. So skipping ahead, I was stuck in that damn wheelchair and was forced to wear the brace by Dr. Carleson. I was rolled down to the ring. Orton and I started yelling and then he attacked me. I could tell he was trying not to hurt my back, which was good because it was really killing me that day for some reason. Anyway, you came down, he threw you over the top rope, and I knocked him down.

After that, I was pissed at being stuck in the wheelchair on live TV and then only being able to get one good punch in. I wasn't really thinking straight…"

"I could tell."

"…so I took off my back brace and started to climb up the turnbuckle. With all the adrenaline in my body I didn't even feel the pain in my back until I hit the mat. When I hit him it was nothing like the first Swanton. It was ten times more painful than that and it hurt so much to even just roll off of him.

"I think that was really the beginning of all of this for me. I started my "new and improved" physical therapy but it hurt more than it did the first time. I assumed that it was because my back was injured more, so I didn't tell you about it. I didn't want to worry you about it, since I knew that for some reason you were blaming yourself for it, but it didn't get better.

"I finally told Dr. Carleson about it, but he wouldn't give me any answers. "It's too early to tell," he kept saying. He gave me some pills to take to help with the pain and they did, a bit, but then I started noticing that it was becoming more painful to stand up or walk. When I told Dr. Carleson about that he looked worried but still, no answers. I don't know why I tried to hide it from you at this point, but I didn't want to admit that it felt like I was falling apart. It took me longer to walk around the house and physical therapy was absolutely excruciating, until finally they had to cut my session short yesterday. And still, no answers.

"Anyway, fast forward to now, five weeks from the initial injury, where I'm lying in a heap on the floor and my legs are unable to support me." Jeff gave a small, shaky laugh. "Bit of a difference from the high-flying daredevil of Monday night Raw, isn't it?"

Matt wasn't fooled by his brother's attempt to act calm and at least partially carefree. He knew Jeff was scared, really scared, about what wasn't being told to him. He knew that he was assuming the worst- his back was permanently damaged, he would never be able to wrestle again, he would be confined to a wheel chair, or other, similar, horrors. "Jeff, it's going to be alright," Matt started, but now it was Jeff's turn to interrupt him.

"How do you know? How the fuck do you know?" He was yelling again. "This isn't like the other times where we thought I could get through it. This isn't just back pain and some twitches in my legs, Matt. My back feels like it's on fire and I can't even fucking walk! So don't tell me it's going to be alright," his voice cracked slightly, but he continued anyway. "Don't fucking tell me it's going to be alright. I'm not a little kid anymore, Matt; I don't need you to lie to me anymore."

Matt didn't know what to say. He felt that small knot of guilt start to creep back into his stomach, reminding him that, because of what he didn't do, he inadvertently helped cause this. He pushed that thought away; it wouldn't do any good to think about what he could've done when Jeff needed help now. Still, what could he do? He had to admit that he had been coddling Jeff to a certain degree in recent weeks, but he was his older brother and he had a right to keep him safe, didn't he? It hurt to know that not only was there nothing he could do to help his brother but it seemed like Jeff didn't even appreciate his efforts anymore.

Matt took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, partially for Jeff's sake and partially so he didn't just snap at his brother. "Fine," he said quietly. "I won't lie to you anymore- you seem pretty screwed right now. _But_, there is no reason why this couldn't just be a temporary thing." Jeff looked like he was about to interrupt, so Matt held his hand up to stop him. "Look, can you just let me finish talking, please?" Jeff shut his mouth and glared at his brother, but ultimately listened to him and didn't say anything.

"Both Dr. Smith and Dr. Carleson said that there was nerve compression as well as vertebra problems, so this is probably just because of that," Matt reasoned. "Nerve compression doesn't always have to lead permanent damage, so there is a chance that is just a temporary thing."

For the first time since he had collapsed Jeff was silent, thinking about what his brother had said and was actually starting to calm down a bit. When he thought about he knew that his brother was most likely right. He wasn't sure if he was convinced that the damage wasn't permanent, since it seemed a bit hard to believe given how much his legs had been hurting recently, but he realized that it was a possibility nonetheless. "Fine," he finally said. "Fine, I guess you could be right, but that still doesn't help the situation here." _Or tell me if I'm ever going to be able to wrestle again_, he silently added.

Matt's face broke into a huge grin as Jeff was talking; it certainly was relieving to, for once, hear him respond to a situation rationally instead of just snapping at him in anger without really thinking about things first. He could tell that he still wasn't convinced it was only a temporary thing, but it was still better than him flat-out refusing to even consider the possibility. "Jeff, are you forgetting what we do for a living?" He asked when Jeff finished talking. "I don't think it's going to be any problem for me to carry you downstairs."

"No."

Matt frowned. "What do you mean, 'no'? You can't just lie there forever!"

"I know, but I am not going to be carried around everywhere." Jeff wasn't going to be talked out of this decision. He knew that, at this point, it was rather stupid to be so adamant about this but he absolutely hated the idea of being reduced to being carried around by his brother.

"Do you think that if you leaned on me you could walk?" Matt suggested, despite the fact that it was obvious that Jeff wasn't going to be able to stand even if someone was helping him.

"We can try." Like his brother, Jeff doubted his ability to stand, but it was the only option he had, other than to be carried around.

Matt stood up, stretched, and held his hand out for Jeff. "C'mon, I'll pull you up." Jeff grabbed Matt's hand and tried to pull himself up, but his legs were still shaky and had a hard time supporting his weight. Matt grabbed onto his arm and dragged him up, only to have his brother lean against him. "You sure you want to try this?" Matt asked.

"Yes," Jeff ground out through clenched teeth; it was obvious that it hurt him to stand up.

"Fine, fine, we'll try this," Matt muttered. "Come on, just lean on me and we'll see if we can get to the top of the stairs at least." Matt took one step and slowly, shakily, Jeff followed suit. They took another step, and another before finally Jeff's legs gave out and he began to fall towards the floor.

"Woah, easy now…" Matt said as he caught his brother and cushioned his fall. "You alright."

"Yeah, I'm fine," Jeff mumbled. "Guess this isn't really going to work though, is it?"

Matt decided that honesty was probably the best policy so he shook his head. "No, probably not," he admitted. "So I can either carry you downstairs and you can sit on the couch until I carry you back up here when you want to go to sleep or you could go to sleep now and save me the trouble of having to carry you up and down the stairs tonight."

Jeff scowled. "Just bring me to my room then," he told him, though his decision was less out of consideration for Matt and more due to the fact that he didn't want to be carried around more than absolutely necessary.

"Fine by me." Matt shifted slightly, moving the arm that was already under Jeff just a bit to allow him to pick up his brother without too much trouble and began staggering towards Jeff's room. "You know this would be easier if you held onto me too," he muttered after taking a few slow steps.

"True," Jeff admitted. "But there's no way I'm going to make it any easier for you to tell wedding night jokes."

Matt rolled his eyes and said, "I wasn't going to tell any."

"Of course you weren't."

"Now that you mention it though…" A wicked grin spread across Matt's face as he stepped over the threshold of Jeff's room.

"No, man, c'mon!" Jeff whined. "Just drop me on my bed or something!"

Matt complied… literally. "As you wish!" He grinned and dropped his brother onto his bed.

Jeff groaned as his back hit the mattress and he arched his back before curling up in a ball, his teeth clenched and his eyes screwed shut. "Damnit, Matt." His voice was thick was pain. "I wasn't being serious!"

"Oh shit!" Matt's face paled considerably as he realized what he did. "Jeff I'm sorry, I didn't mean to… I forgot!"

"It's okay," Jeff said, though his voice suggested otherwise. "Just leave me alone, okay? I think I'm gonna try to get some sleep."

Matt's guilt came back tenfold as he nodded and silently backed out of the room, the quiet click of the door echoing in the mostly silent house. He slowly walked down the stairs and collapsed on the couch. The TV was still on and, by the sounds of it, Raw was still in progress and someone was getting beat up. A quick glance at the screen confirmed his suspicions but he wasn't in any mood to watch and it was quickly turned off.

In a burst of anger he hurled the remote at the wall, watching with grim satisfaction as it shattered and fell to the floor. He had sworn that he wouldn't do anything to hurt Jeff again but less than ten minutes ago he had done just that. Unintentionally, sure, but it didn't change the fact that he wasn't thinking and he had hurt his brother again. Jeff may insist that nothing that had happened to him in recent weeks was Matt's fault, but he'd have a hard time convincing him that he was innocent, especially when the evidence that proved otherwise was continually growing.

The next morning Matt didn't bring up what he had inadvertently done to his brother the night before and Jeff didn't mention it either, though that may have been largely due to the fact that he was busy trying to talk Matt into finding a way so he wouldn't have to be carried into Dr. Carleson's office that day.

"I mean, c'mon Matt, there has to be some other way…"

"Well if you can think of another way then please, feel free to share it with me!" Matt snapped. "We've been over this already. You know you can't walk at all, even if I'm helping you! So unless you want me to call an ambulance or something…"

"You know, that would work…" Jeff murmured.

Matt groaned. "I wasn't serious! We are not going to call an ambulance."

It only took a few minutes for Matt to cave in to his brother and not long after that an ambulance had pulled up to the house. While Matt explained what his brother's back problem was and what had happened last night Jeff was quickly checked over by an EMT, loaded onto a stretcher, and put into the back of the ambulance. Matt climbed in after him, still trying to finish up his explanation of what exactly was going on, and the brothers were raced to the hospital.

When they arrived Jeff was rushed inside, admitted to the hospital, and brought to a room, with Matt following the group of nurses and doctors there. It was decided that he would have an MRI, and possibly a CT scan after that if it was necessary, in addition to the normal blood work to determine exactly what was going on with his back before they started any sort of treatment. So, not even twenty minutes after being admitted, he was wheeled off to get his various tests done before finally being brought back to his room.

"Man, if the person doesn't die from whatever they were brought here for then the stress of being rushed around everywhere is going to do them in!" Jeff joked after everyone except Matt had left the room. "You'd think they'd want things to be relatively calm so the person could get better, but no…"

"Well figuring out what's wrong with them so they can be treated is more important than anything else, you know." Jeff and Matt turned towards the door at the sound of a third person's voice, their eyes narrowing slightly as they saw Dr. Carleson standing there.

"Nice to see you finally decided to stop by, now for once will you just tell me what the hell is going on?" Jeff's voice had gotten slightly louder towards the end of his sentence and it was obvious that he was trying, with only partial success, to keep his anger under control.

"I'm sorry Jeff," he said. "I was busy looking at the results from your tests today."

"And?" He asked. "What's the diagnosis?"

"Your current leg problem is definitely due to the nerve compression in your back," Dr. Carleson explained. "When your disk slipped farther a few weeks ago I told you that the nerve compression was more severe but it's worse than I originally thought it was."

"Is it permanent?" Jeff's voice was quiet, his anger completely gone and replaced with fear and apprehension. He wouldn't admit it, but he was terrified that the damage in his legs couldn't be treated.

Dr. Carleson hesitated for a moment, as if he was unwilling to answer his question. Jeff closed his eyes and mentally prepared himself for the bad news, but it wasn't quite what he expected it to be. "Jeff, I'm afraid that this can't be taken care of with conservative treatment anymore. You're going to need to have surgery as soon as possible… or you may never be able to walk again."


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: Me no own anyone except Dr

**Disclaimer: Me no own anyone except the few OC's. **

**A/N: So… only one chapter left after this, then the sequel. I'm leaving for vacation on Monday so I'll post the last chapter when I get back that Sunday. I'll also post the first chapter of the sequel that day and then I'm leaving for **_**another**_** week. Updates will start up again after that. I offer you a slightly longer chapter to hold you over until my update a week from now. **

The room was absolutely silent after Dr. Carleson's announcement. Surgery? The idea seemed ridiculous to the Hardys; they had both been assured that Jeff's back problem could be taken care of with conservative treatment. Neither of them had ever really expected Jeff to have to go under the knife and it took them awhile to get used to the idea. Finally the initial shock had worn off enough for Jeff to ask the one question that was at the forefront of the others. "What will happen if I have this surgery?"

"Well the procedure itself isn't too complicated," Dr. Carleson began. "It would most likely end up being a spinal fusion."

"I know what a fusion surgery is," Jeff interrupted. "I've known a few people who've had neck fusions. I'm assuming they're the same?"

"Yes, the two surgeries are extremely similar. A bone graft is placed around the slipped vertebra so that when it heals the bones will fuse together and stabilize the vertebra. In addition, screws will be placed in your back to provide additional stability. After the surgery you would have to stay in the hospital for a few days until you can walk on your own. Then you will be allowed to return home as long as someone is there with you, though I'm assuming that Matt will be there for all of this?"

"Yes sir," Matt confirmed. He had no intention of abandoning his brother during his surgery and recovery besides the fact that he still had three weeks left before he would need to arrange to take more time off, which he quickly reminded Jeff and Dr. Carleson of.

"That's good. You shouldn't have to take anymore time off though, since Jeff should be fine on his own by that time and you would be able to return to wrestling."

"Doesn't matter, I'm still going to ask Vince for more time off." The sentence is casually said, as if this was already a well-known fact and Matt was just repeating it but the reaction it got suggested otherwise.

"Matt, what the hell are you talking about?" Jeff asked. "You can't take even more time off!" He had suspected for awhile that Matt was going to ask for more time off if his back was still hurting him after the two months were up but he had hoped that his brother wouldn't put his career on hold just because of him any longer than absolutely necessary.

"It's not like it's going to be a problem or anything. Shawn and Orton have their feud going right now because of us and if I return now it would make it seem like I was abandoning you which would screw up the storylines." His voice was still obnoxiously calm and casual, despite Jeff being less than thrilled with him at the moment.

"I mean, if I went back right now they'd have to turn me heel because I would technically be abandoning you, which would mean feuding with Shawn. You know, on second thought that would actually be a rather awesome storyline." He paused for a moment, as if letting that scenario play out in his head. He finally shook his head and said, "On second thought that wouldn't really be awesome because then when you finally returned they'd have me attacking you in the back or something and you know how much I hate those storylines."

"But if they didn't write it where you were attacking me out of the ring that would be an awesome feud and you have to admit that it is awesome to fight each other once in awhile," Jeff pointed out. "A full-blown feud, especially set up like this, would be great to do. Stick me with Shawn and you can team up with Orton- can you picture the fans' reaction to it?"

Matt laughed. "Oh man, they'd go crazy over it."

Jeff glanced over at Dr. Carleson, who had been quiet during the brothers' entire conversation. "So Doctor, how long will it be after the surgery before I can make my return and kick my brother's ass?"

"Well, the recovery period varies for everyone but most people can go back to doing most of their old activities in anywhere from six to nine mon-"

Jeff interrupted him. "Damn, Matt, looks like we won't be able to pull off the feud unless you return towards the end of Shawn and Orton's thing and feud with Shawn for long enough for me to return."

Matt didn't seem to be paying attention to his brother though. He was frowning and looked like he was deep in thought. Finally, he asked, "Dr. Carleson, you said that _most_ people can return to _most_ of their old activities within that time period. I'm assuming that the "most people" was simply referring to the fact that it could take less time or more time for any one person to heal, but what sort of activities would the typical person not be able to pursue after the surgery?"

"Well it varies from person to person so I couldn't give you an exact list of things that someone wouldn't be able to do," Dr. Carleson said. His voice was still calm, but there was a hint of uneasiness behind it.

"If you had to guess right now, what sort of things would you say Jeff would have to avoid on a day-to-day basis following the surgery?" Jeff was, by the point, paying close attention to the conversation, completely serious again as he waited to hear what Dr. Carleson would say.

"Well, it's hard to tell before the surgery…" There was no mistaking the fact that Dr. Carleson was extremely uncomfortable with the current topic of conversation.

"But you have to have some idea of what I wouldn't be able to do," Jeff interrupted. "I mean, you know basically everything about the type of life I live- hell, you've seen me wrestle who knows how many times, you know what I do for a career. There has to be some things that you think I wouldn't be able to do if I responded normally to the surgery."

Dr. Carleson was trapped and he knew it. He sighed and said, "Well, someone who responds normal to the surgery would have to take simple precautions like avoiding lifting heavy things on a day-to-day basis or having something hard hit the spine..."

"So basically I would have to avoid doing anything to put too much stress on my back," Jeff confirmed.

"Yes, that's exactly what would have to happen."

"Including wrestling?" Dr. Carleson flinched slightly at the bluntness of the question and the brothers' fears were confirmed, even before he answered with a soft "Yes."

Jeff closed his eyes, breathing deeply and trying to control the many emotions that were running through him. So it didn't matter whether he had the surgery or not- he would never wrestle again. "Just leave," he said quietly, not even opening his eyes.

"Jeff-"

"Get out!" He yelled, his eyes snapping open. "Get out!" Whether out of respect for his wishes or simply because he was afraid of how upset both Matt and Jeff were Dr. Carleson turned and quickly left the room.

It was silent for all of about ten seconds. "Damnit!" Jeff yelled. Matt was silently thankful that Dr. Carleson had closed the door. "Argh!" He picked up the glass of water that was on the small table next to his bed and brought his arm back as if to throw it, but he was stopped by Matt grabbing his arm.

"Destroying everything within reach is not going to help." Matt had slipped into the calm-down-Jeff role that had become second nature for him in the past few weeks, pushing his own overwhelming guilt and sadness away for the moment. Right now he needed to reason with Jeff; he couldn't waste time regretting what he did, even if he knew it was the cause of all of this.

"But it would make me feel a hell of a lot better!" Jeff was still yelling and showing no signs of calming down.

"Yes but then someone would've come running in, seen the mess, and sent you off for a psychiatric evaluation." Matt's pitiful attempt at humor, despite them being well intended, did nothing to raise his brother's spirits.

"Matt did you even hear what he said? I am never going to wrestle again! _I am never going to wrestle again!_ All these weeks I at least thought I was going to get better. I thought that there was at least a small chance that, despite all the problems, things would work out in the end but guess what, _they didn't_." Jeff sounded choked up and Matt was surprised that he hadn't started crying yet. Hell, if he had gotten the news that he wouldn't wrestle again he certainly would be.

"You even said it yourself, this business is my life," Jeff continued, despite the fact that it looked- and sounded- like he would break down any moment now. "I mean, our childhood dream was becoming wrestlers and we did that, but that doesn't mean I'm ready to give it all up! I don't _want_ to give it up!" During his rant his voice had quieted down considerably, until it was just barely above a whisper. "What am I supposed to do now? How do I just move on from losing my entire career?"

Matt was looking down at his hands, not wanting to see the pain on Jeff's face, while he tried to think of something to say. What could he say? It would be alright, they'd survive this? Even in his mind the words sounded weak and pathetic and he knew that if he said them aloud his brother would just start screaming again. "Jeff-" he began, finally looking up, but he stopped at the sight of a few tears running down his face, his eyes screwed shut as he tried not to break down completely.

He reached forward as if to wipe them away them away but stopped when Jeff pulled back, his eyes opening. "Don't," he said softly. He took a deep breath. "Look, I think I need some time by myself, if you don't mind."

Matt nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him to give Jeff some more privacy. He slumped against the wall outside his room, completely emotionally drained. He couldn't stop thinking that he had ruined his brother's life, albeit unintentionally. Every brotherly instinct in him was screaming to do something to comfort him or find someway to fix the situation but for once he didn't know how. There wasn't anything he could say or do and it was driving him crazy.

"Matt? Why are you out in the hall?"

Matt looked up as soon as he heard the unmistakable voice of Dr. Carleson. "Jeff wanted some time to think things over after that announcement you left him with." His voice was bitter but he didn't care enough to try to pretend otherwise.

Dr. Carleson looked away. "I'm sorry I had to tell him that, I really am."

Matt let out a short bark of laughter, though it sounded almost insane to his own ears. "You're sorry? You're _sorry_? I doubt you would have even told him if we didn't practically force the information out of you! Now you're going to stand there while Jeff's life is crumbling in front of his eyes and dare to tell me that you're sorry?"

"Matt, believe me, if there was another way to do this I swear I would tell you," Dr. Carleson said, trying to make the elder Hardy brother listen to reason. "But I honestly believe that it's better if he didn't wrestle again, since if he did he would be running a huge risk of having more, even worse, back problems."

Matt's eyes narrowed slightly as he listened to Jeff's doctor. "Wait, how high of a risk?" He asked, his voice now perfectly controlled and giving none of his thoughts away.

"I couldn't really say for sure, but if the surgery goes smoothly he would only really have to worry about moves that put a lot of stress on his back, not the usual bumps you guys take when someone clotheslines you or something," he explained. "So basically Jeff's high risk maneuvers would all be out of the question as well as any holds or moves done by his opponent that would put pressure on his back."

"But what if his matches were set up so none of those moves were used?" Matt's calm façade was starting to dissolve and was being replaced with excitement. "Could he wrestle then?"

"He could wrestle in a regular match it would just be an incredibly stupid thing to do!" Dr. Carleson snapped. "So yes, he could wrestle in specially designed matches but I would highly, _highly_ recommend against it. If anything were to happen in a match he could end up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life! Do you understand, Matt, your brother risks never walking again if he steps foot into a wrestling ring!"

"Oh, I understand," Matt said, his voice perfectly innocent. Inside, though, he was seething. _I understand now that you would rather my brother spent the rest of his life wondering if he could've returned to the ring instead of actually finding out. I know that you know nothing about us or the business and that you never well. I know that we can't trust you to tell the truth anymore- if you've ever told the truth- and we'll have to do things for ourselves._ "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to talk things over with my brother." He opened the door and took a step towards it before turning around and adding, "No offense, but please don't come in right now."

Dr. Carleson nodded, turned, and walked down the hall. Matt watched him round the corner before stepping into Jeff's room, closing the door behind him. Jeff had been staring off into space but he turned to look at his brother when he entered the room. There was something different about him. The panic and anger from earlier was still there but it was subdued, replaced almost by sadness and resignation.

"I've been thinking about this and I know that there's nothing I can do about my wrestling career-" Jeff began but Matt quickly cut him off.

"Jeff, hold on a second, I just talked to Dr. Carleson and-"

"Wait, Matt, let me finish," Jeff interrupted. "I mean, I still don't like the idea of never being able to wrestle again- especially if Orton is going to be the one to get the credit for having "ended my career"- but I think I can live with it." He laughed shakily. "Not like there's anything I could do about it anyway, though, and believe me it's going to take some getting used to-"

Matt couldn't take this anymore. "Will you stop talking about never wrestling again and just listen to me!" He was tired of listening to his brother's depressing end-of-career acceptance speech and just wanted to tell him what he found out from Dr. Carleson. "Jeff, you may be able to wrestle again!"

Jeff frowned. "What the hell are you talking about?" He asked. "You heard what Dr. Carleson said!"

"I talked to him out in the hall and he said that he strongly advises against you wrestling, but physically you would be able to!" Matt explained excitedly. "He doesn't want you to because you would risk ending up in a wheelchair if too much stress was put on your back but if you stop doing Swantons from 30 feet in the air and set up your matches so your opponent doesn't use certain submission moves you would be fine!"

Jeff stared at his brother, not saying anything at first. He had managed to convince himself that it would be fine if he couldn't wrestle. He knew that he would never be able to fully get over it, but he would be able to move on with his life for the most part. Then Matt comes bursting to tell him that he could wrestle and he didn't know what to think anymore. Part of him wanted to believe Matt. He wanted nothing more in the world right now to know that Matt was telling the truth and he actually could wrestle again but his brother had been feeding him similar stories for so long he was hesitant to believe him. It wasn't that he thought that Matt would intentionally lie to him, but his entire "recovery" had been him getting his hopes up only to have them crushed and he didn't know if he could stand having them crushed one more time.

The door a crack and Dr. Carleson stuck his head in. "Can I come in now?" He asked. Matt scowled, but nodded anyway, and he walked in. "So Jeff, I'm assuming Matt told you that you could technically return to the ring if you wanted to risk being put in a wheelchair for the rest of your life?"

Jeff nodded. "Yeah, he just finished telling me that," he said, still slightly shocked. Matt had been telling the truth; his story was just confirmed by Dr. Carleson. He could actually wrestle again! A huge grin broke out on his face at the thought. "So, when am I going to have the surgery?" He asked.

As Jeff and Dr. Carleson began discussing the specifics of his surgery Matt stepped outside to call WWE headquarters to let them know what was going on. He was quickly put in touch with Shane and explained that Jeff was going to need surgery and that there would have to be slight changes made to his wrestling matches, but that he should return in 6-9 months and requested that he be allowed time off while his brother was recovering.

"I'm going to need to discuss this with my father before I tell you anything for sure," Shane said when Matt had finished talking. "I don't think there would be any problem in eliminating certain submission moves from Jeff's matches, especially if we told the whole roster the situation so they would know not to use them. The time off is another problem, since I don't know if he was planning to use you in any upcoming storylines. I'll call you back when I know more though."

"Thanks, Shane," Matt said. After he had hung up, he closed his phone and tucked it away with a sigh. He knew that he didn't really need to be there for Jeff during his recovery, but he felt like he owed it to his brother to be there anyway. He made his way back up to Jeff's room only to find that Dr. Carleson was still discussing the specifics of the surgery with him.

"What were you doing?" Jeff asked as Matt collapsed in the chair next to the bed.

"Telling Shane about your surgery, the changes that will have to be made to your matches, and asking for more time off," Matt told him.

"What did he say about it all?"

"I don't know, he said he would call me back after he talked to Vince." At that moment his phone rang. "I thought that only happened in movies!" He joked as he fished it out of his pocket to answer it. "Hello… yes… yes sir, but most other moves would be fine… Okay… Oh, thank you, sir! Wait, what? Yes, I've heard a few of the others talk about it… Sometime later this week, I believe, hold on a second." He covered the mouthpiece of his phone and asked, "Jeff, when are you having the surgery?"

"Saturday."

"And do either of you care if they do one of those Emergency Room specials on it?"

"…Not really, no."

"As long as they don't disturb the procedure then no, I don't care if they want to film."

"Saturday and no, that wouldn't be a problem at all… Alright sir… Goodbye." Matt hung up and rolled his eyes. "They're going to send a camera crew here on Friday. They want to talk to all three of us prior to Jeff's surgery on Saturday and then they want to return during his therapy to get some shots of that." He sighed. "No, they couldn't just let us get through this in peace…"

Jeff laughed. "C'mon Matt, you have to admit that at least it's going to be an interesting weekend."

Jeff's statement turned out to be all too true. The camera crew did arrive around mid-morning that Friday. Matt had been waiting for them in the lobby and quickly showed them up to Jeff's room where most of the pre-surgery filming would take place, though he was quickly brushed aside as they set up the camera and microphones. Jeff smiled apologetically at his brother, who merely grinned and shook his head; it wasn't really any problem.

"So, how exactly is this going to work?" Jeff asked once most of the equipment was set up.

Jason, the cameraman, looked up from his work and answered his question. "Well, basically you're just going to explain what happened and what's going to happen tomorrow. You know, give you thoughts about what's been going on in your life and stuff like that."

"Seems simple enough," Jeff commented. "When do we start?"

"Right about now, actually," Jason said. "Filming in three… two… one..." He pointed at Jeff to signal for him to start.

"Well, this isn't exactly how I'm used to appear on camera," Jeff began. In the back of the room Matt suppressed a snort. Jeff's hair was, for once, mostly his natural color, he was wearing a hospital gown, and, of course, he was confined to a bed- to say that he wasn't used to appearing on camera like that was a huge understatement.

"So, you'll have to forgive me for how I look, but I'm currently in the process of getting ready for surgery. About five weeks ago my back was injured in a match against Orton, resulting in a slipped vertebra with a bit of nerve compression. The following week I did a Swanton on top of him, despite my injury, but only really succeeded in hurting my back farther. I wasn't really thinking at the time, but if I could go back and change that night I wouldn't do the Swanton, not if I knew what would happen because of it.

"Because of that Swanton the vertebra slipped even farther, which led to more nerve compression. After that I still continued with my physical therapy but it wasn't really doing much good, you know? I mean, I was constantly in pain and it got harder to stand up or walk. Then on Monday I collapsed- my legs just couldn't support me anymore. We called an ambulance the next day, since I still couldn't stand when I woke up that morning, and I got admitted to the hospital where my doctor basically told me that I would never wrestle again.

"At first I was angry and pissed off. I mean, I've always wanted to be a wrestler; I didn't know what I would do if I couldn't wrestle. So I didn't want to believe it at first, but finally I sorta came to accept it. What else was I going to do? I couldn't change it, so even if I didn't like it there wasn't anything I could do. So Matt comes bursting into my room just as I've reached that conclusion and I start going on about how I thought I could live it with."

Jeff laughed quietly. "It's one of those things you can look back on and laugh, but at the time it wasn't quite so funny. Anyway, Matt interrupts me and tells me that we both… misunderstood… my doctor." Jeff thought that it wouldn't exactly be a good idea to ruin Dr. Carleson's image in a video that anyone in the world would be able to see. "Basically, I would be able to wrestle after all but my doctor highly recommends that I don't, since I could end up in a wheelchair for the rest of my life if something goes wrong, but I think that's a risk I'm willing to take. I mean, like I said, wrestling is my life and even if I'm risking suffering an injury I couldn't return from later on down the road I'm still going to return and once again go out there and give it my all.

"So here I am, going to have surgery tomorrow. It's basically a fusion surgery. They're going to drill a hole in my vertebra, stick some of my bone in there, and add some screws or something for extra support. Dr. Carleson, my doctor, could probably explain things better than I can, but that's basically the gist of everything." Jeff paused for a moment. "Anything else I need to add?"

Jason shook his head. "Nope, I think you covered everything," he said, obviously satisfied with the footage they had gotten. "Matt, do you want to go now and get it over with?"

Matt shrugged. "Sure, why not?" It took a few minutes for the camera to get repositioned, but after that was done Matt got the countdown and the okay to start talking.

"This whole thing has basically just been one huge rollercoaster ride, for both of us," he began. "Jeff's gone from pretty much okay to not being able to do much of anything. It's just been a really stressful time. I can't imagine what it was like for him, but for me at least it was just really rough. I mean, I could tell he was suffering but I couldn't do anything to help him and that drove me crazy. I've always been a bit overprotective of Jeff so at first there was the typical "What did I do wrong?" sort of mentality to my reaction to the situation, but even after that wore away it was really hard seeing him fall apart and only being able to give him a few words on encouragement.

"However, I have complete confidence in his ability to make a good, solid recovery from this. I don't know if he'll come back 100 but he'll put 120 into all of his matches, which is what matters anyway. It's going to be a long, hard road back but I'm going to stay with him the entire time and 6-9 months from now we'll be back in the ring again."

"Good, very good, both of you!" Jason said when Matt was done talking. "After we talk to Dr. Carleson and get some footage from the surgery and the therapy we'll have enough to put together the video for the sight."

"Awesome," Jeff said, leaning forward to shake Jason's hand. "I look forward to seeing what you do and I'll see you tomorrow then."

Although he put on a good act in front of the crew, Jeff wasn't exactly completely calm and ready for his surgery. He knew that the doctors would do a fine job but he couldn't help but worry about various "What if…?" situations the entire night. Matt was exactly the same and the two of them spent quite a few hours that night discussing random topics in an attempt to keep the thought of surgery from their minds. They finally dozed off a couple of hours before dawn and slept until the nurses came by to get Jeff for his surgery.

Matt followed them out of the room, blinking tiredly and rubbing his eyes. It was, in his opinion, too early to wake up but he wasn't going to sleep through his brother's surgery. He sat through Jeff's discussion with his anesthesiologist and watched as his brother was knocked out and wheeled into the surgery room. Only after he vanished from sight did Matt wake up, a burst of panic coursing through him. All the thoughts that he had tried to suppress the night before had come back tenfold and he anxiously paced the room, hoping and praying that everything would go smoothly.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: I only own the OC's. I do not own Matt, Jeff, or any other wrestler, announcer, etc.**

**A/N: So here it is- the last chapter of **_**Time Withers All**_**. Thank you to everyone who has read and/or reviewed my story. The first chapter of the sequel is already posted. The title is **_**Breaking Both My Wings**_**, in case you wanted to read it.**

"C'mon, let's move him over to the other bed." To Jeff's still-sleepy mind, the words weren't making any sense, but then again, nothing really was. At first he couldn't even remember where he was. It wasn't until he realized that the pain in his back felt different than usual- it was a sharper pain and didn't radiate down his legs like it was before- that he remembered that he had just had surgery and was, most likely, still in the hospital.

As soon as he remembered that, the words that he had woken up and initially heard made a little bit more sense. Someone must be seriously injured or just had surgery and they were being moved into Jeff's temporary room in ICU. Jeff blinked a couple of times and tried to see what was going on. The blinds on the window were tightly closed and it was hard to see in the semi-darkness, but he could still see who was being placed on the other bed.

"Matt!" Jeff tried to yell to his brother but his parched mouth made it hard to talk at all. "Matt!"

One of the nurses turned around. "It's alright, Jeff, he's fine," she said soothingly. "He's just tired, that's all. He didn't sleep at all before your surgery and then stayed up through that and for several hours after we brought you back here. He's just getting some much needed sleep." She smiled at him. "You need to sleep as well." He didn't see her slip a sedative into his IV, but it wasn't long before he felt its effect.

The last thing he saw before he fell asleep again was the nurse's smiling face and, just beyond her, the sleeping form of his brother.

XXXXX

The next time Jeff woke up, that he could remember, he was back in the room he had before surgery. Matt was asleep in the chair next to him, slouched over in what looked like a rather uncomfortable position. He chuckled and shifted slightly to get a better look at him, but didn't get very far before he had to stop because of the pain in his back. He groaned and stopped moving in hopes that the pain in his back would lessen slightly.

"You okay?" Matt mumbled as he sat up and stretched.

"Yeah, you?" Jeff's voice cracked slightly from dryness.

Matt chuckled and picked up a cup on the table next to Jeff's bed, bringing it up to his mouth so he could suck on an ice chip.

"Thanks," he said once his mouth wasn't quite so dry anymore. "But you never answered my question."

"I'm fine," Matt said. "A bit sore, but I'm fine." It was true. He had been worried about his brother when they initially brought him out of surgery and he had stayed awake for awhile watching over him, but now that he was actually awake he just felt relieved and happy again.

"How long was I out?" Jeff asked.

Matt shrugged. "I don't know. You kept waking up and dozing off again, though they did need to sedate you once."

"I remember that. I woke up and saw them carrying you over to the other bed in my room in ICU and started panicking." He chuckled. "Matt, I understand you were concerned about me, but please make sure you remember to sleep next time."

"Hey, you try watching your brother go through surgery and then just decide to go to sleep before he wakes up," Matt said, but he laughed quietly as well. "Are you hungry or anything? Should I call in your nurse?"

Jeff shook his head. "No, I don't think I could keep food down right now," he said.

Matt grimaced. "Feeling nauseous?" He asked. He thought he remembered Dr. Carleson mentioning that Jeff could feel slightly sick to his stomach after the surgery.

"A little," Jeff admitted. "Nothing too bad, though. I just don't want to try eating anything right now unless they make me." He sighed. "I'm just glad that everything's nearly over. No more worrying whether the days going to come when I can't walk anymore- that's already happened- and no more worrying about me not being able to wrestle. Just some physical therapy for a few months and then I can make my grand return."

Matt just smiled and didn't say anything. He didn't want to ruin his brother's good mood by pointing out the fact that there were still a million things that could go wrong following his surgery or that he still had a minimum of six months before he could even start to think about returning to the ring. It was nice to see Jeff in a good mood for the first time in nearly a month and a half; he didn't want to ruin it by bringing up what-if's.

It wasn't long before Jeff's nurse came in with more pain medication and, despite Jeff insisting that he was fine, gave it to him. Whether due to the medication or simply because he was still exhausted it wasn't long after the nurse left that Jeff began to doze off again and eventually fell asleep.

Not long after Jeff had fallen asleep again his door opened quietly and the person standing there softly asked, "Can we come in?"

Matt jumped up from his seat and ran over to the door, pulling it all the way open. "Shawn! Hunter!" He was surprised to see his coworkers standing there. "Yeah, come in, come in," he said, standing aside to let them walk in.

"Actually, we have some things we need to bring up first," Hunter said. "We were wondering if you would help us carry them up, but if Jeff's asleep we'd understand if you wanted to stay here…"

Matt did want to stay and watch over his brother, but he knew that he would be fine in the hospital, especially if he was only going to be gone for a little while. "No, I'll help you carry things up," he told them.

As they walked down to Hunter's and Shawn's car Matt filled them in on what had been going on recently, from Jeff's ill-fated Swanton nearly five weeks earlier through to the surgery he just had.

"Are you sure it's a good idea for him to wrestle, though?" Shawn asked as they walked outside. "It's not that I don't want him to return, I'm just wondering if that's a smart thing to do."

"I think, and the doctor agrees with me, that it would be fine as long as he didn't Swanton someone from 30 feet in the air and as long as people made sure not to use certain submission moves," Matt said.

"I don't think you're going to have any problems getting the roster to go a bit easier on his back, but are you sure Jeff's going to go along with this plan?" Hunter asked with a small chuckle. "You know how he can be."

"Yeah I do, and I am worried about how well he's going to go along with the 'guidelines', but he knows that if he wants to keep wrestling for any length of time he'll have to… follow… them…" His voice trailed off as they stopped by a car. "_This_ is your car?" It wasn't that the car looked special or different. It was just the usual, normal type of rental car that the WWE employees used whenever they needed to drive to the next town. Granted, they were driving a minivan, but that wasn't what made Matt stare. No, what made Matt stop was the fact that it was completely packed with various balloons, plants, and bears, all obviously intended for Jeff.

"What were you expecting?" Shawn asked, grinning madly at the look of shock on Matt's face.

"Not this," he muttered. "Not this much stuff for Jeff."

"Well when we mentioned we were going to go visit you two today nearly everyone gave us something," Hunter explained. "They had that triple-brand house show on Wednesday too, so we collected things from people on ECW and Smackdown as well as Raw."

"Oh," Matt said, still staring at the piles of gifts in the car. "But is all of that even going to fit into the room?"

Hunter and Shawn burst out laughing. "Only one way to find out," Shawn said, grinning madly as he opened the door.

Even with all three of them carrying things up to Jeff's room they still needed to go back down for a second and third trip before everything had been brought up. They were as quiet as possible as they tried to put the many gifts in some semblance of order. The plants were set over by the windows and the balloons were put as far away from the wires and equipment around Jeff's bed as possible, with the various cards, stuffed animals, and other assorted gifts stuck wherever they could fit. By the time they finished the room looked like it was about to open as a hospital gift shop.

"So how many of the guys bought Jeff stuffed bears?" Matt asked quietly once they had finished.

Hunter shrugged. "I don't know," he said honestly. "I know that none of the divas got him rainbow bears, but I couldn't tell you who bought what."

"I don't think too many of them got Jeff balloons either," Shawn added. "I think they stuck mostly to plants, cards, and various scripts and plot outlines. I gave him that one." He pointed to a large packet of papers that was sitting on top of the pile of scripts. "It's the rough outline of my feud with Randy through to when you two return. They're thinking about bringing Jericho back in to keep it going."

Hunter shook his head. "Only in our business would you get wrestling scripts as a 'Get well soon' present."

"Yeah, but when you were last out with an injury you were practically begging people to give you scripts and outlines, not to mention the fact that you were tormenting your poor wife about what the plan for everything was," Shawn reminded with a laugh.

"True," Hunter admitted. "But that's a bit different than just assuming Jeff's going to want to have fifty different outlines of all of about twelve plots."

Matt laughed. "Yeah, but Jeff's feeling a bit wrestling-deprived, since he doesn't know any of the specifics about the feuds beyond what's seen on TV. As soon as he wakes up he's going to start reading through-" He cut off as Jeff sighed and shifted slightly, looking over to make sure that they hadn't woken him up. Luckily they hadn't. "Keep your voice down," he said, his own voice barely above a whisper.

Shawn chuckled quietly. "You're like a mothering hen," he said softly. "Always watching over him, making sure he keeps out of trouble and doesn't hurt himself."

"I don't mother him!" Matt snapped. "I just worry about him."

"All the time," Hunter said with a small snort. "And you do have to make sure he's alright or else you blame yourself."

Matt scowled, but didn't argue; he knew they were right. He did mother Jeff, to a certain degree, but he was his older brother and all brothers- and sisters- worried about their siblings to a certain extent. Besides, it wasn't like he suffocated Jeff or stopped him from doing things, provided he didn't want to do anything extremely stupid or dangerous. "How long are you two here?" He asked, changing the subject.

"Dunno," Hunter said. "As long as we make it to the pay-per-view tomorrow we're fine."

"We did want to wait to talk to Jeff, if he wakes up anytime soon," Shawn added. "I don't know how long you want us to stay around, though…"

"Stay around as long as you want," Matt interrupted. "I'm not going to be doing anything really until Jeff can leave the hospital.

"Mothering hen," Hunter muttered.

"When do they think he will be able to leave?" Shawn said quickly before Matt could respond to the 'mothering hen' comment.

"Dr. Carleson said that people can usually leave after a couple of days, which is usually how long it takes for them to start walking again, but Jeff's back was really screwed up. He could be here longer than that because they won't let anyone leave until they walk."

"You aren't talking about me, are you?" The three heads turned around at the sound of the fourth voice. Jeff was finally awake. He was staring at the trio, still looking half-asleep, with a slightly puzzled look on his face. Finally, he grinned and said, "Hunter, Shawn! I thought I recognized you two!"

Hunter laughed. "Who else would drive down here on their day off to bring you all your get well gifts?"

Jeff looked around the room and for the first time noticed all of the gifts piled in the room. His eyes widened as they scanned the room, finally stopping on the scripts that were haphazardly stacked on the small table next to his bed. "Please tell me those are the plot outlines," he said.

"Yeah, for Raw, Smackdown, and ECW," Shawn said. "Including an exclusive look at what they're planning for our feud with Orton."

"'Our feud'?" Jeff smirked slightly. "Shawn, I'm not even wrestling right now. How can it be my feud as well?"

"I'm fighting for you, therefore it's your feud too," Shawn clarified. "Besides, they're going to draw you into it soon enough. They're thinking about bringing cryptic messages into it to draw Jericho back."

"Isn't cryptic messages a bit too 'Taker-ish, though?" Jeff asked. "I mean, granted that was how he made his return, but how am I going to fit into all of this."

"Well, they're hoping to have it play out where no one will know if they're from you to Randy, Jericho to me, or Undertaker to Edge, but they aren't sure how it would work with two brands. I think they're going to do a combination of 'Takers usual 'I will return' message and the code that Jericho used, but I don't know how they're fitting you into it," Shawn explained.

"Look, I don't know about Shawn here, but I didn't drive down here to talk wrestling the whole time," Hunter interrupted, though the huge smile on his face made it was obvious he wasn't annoyed. "How're you doing, Jeff?"

Jeff groaned. "If I tell you the truth can we go back to talking about wrestling?" He asked innocently.

The trio burst out laughing. "What did I tell you? The poor guy's deprived," Matt said once he had calmed down a bit. "Humor us both and let's talk wrestling for a bit, if you don't mind. God knows we both want to hear what's going on."

XXXXX

"I am so happy to be back home," Jeff said as he opened the door to Matt's house. Although he technically could walk well enough to take care of himself, Dr. Carleson wanted him to continue to stay with Matt until he was completely healed. just in case there were other complications during his recovery. "And I'm happy to be able to walk without any help!"

"I'm happy you can walk in by yourself too. You've gotten heavy, did you know that?" Matt joked.

Jeff leaned over and smacked him across the back of the head. "I had surgery, was in the hospital for over a week, am just now coming home and you're picking on me?"

"Yes, I do believe I am," Matt said. The two brothers stared at each other, completely straight faced for all of about three seconds before bursting out laughing.

The atmosphere in the house was completely different than it had been when they left it when Jeff had to go to the hospital nearly two weeks before. When they left everything had been tense, stressed, and depressed, but their return was marked with jokes and smiles. They were both, for the most part, optimistic that Jeff would make a complete recovery by the end of the year and that thought put them both in an unbelievably good mood. Jeff forgot his frustration and fear that his many problems before had brought and Matt could finally let go of a bit of his guilt. The entire ordeal had taken its toll on them, but things were, for the first time in ages, they were both beginning to heal.

Ironically, Jeff was released from the hospital on a Monday. Their first night back in Matt's house was celebrated by their first good food in two weeks, laughter, and, of course, Monday Night Raw. Jeff dug out the Raw scripts he had gotten from one of the many boxes that were piled next to the front door and, after passing half of them off to Matt, tried to follow the show using them. Unfortunately too many changes had been made since he had gotten the scripts for them to be of much use beyond the basic outline, but they did their best, until finally they had to admit defeat and just watched the episode.

Shawn hadn't been lying; that night the first of the cryptic messages appeared. They had brought Edge over from Smackdown to talk about how some people though the Undertaker would be returning to the WWE and appear on Raw when Orton came out to tell him that no one cares about what he did to the Undertaker when he recently destroyed Jeff's career. Once Randy had come out it was only logical that Shawn would come out as well.

That was when the lights suddenly went out and a single bell tolled. The crowd went wild and started chanting for the Undertaker, at which point "Don't act like you know what you're talking about…" echoed in the arena. It was one of the last things Jeff had said to Orton over a month ago and, from the "Hardy! Hardy!" chants that had now started up, it seemed like the crowd recognized the line. That was when the Titantron lit up, displaying a code very much like the one Jericho had used. The words "We've cracked the code for you…" flashed on the screen, before "Beware of the Undertaker", "His career still lives", and "Jericho's not done" appeared on the screen one at a time, before fading out and being replaced with "…but which answer is the right one?"

Matt and Jeff continued to just stare at the TV long after Raw had gone to a commercial break. "I don't know whether that was brilliant or just stupid," Jeff finally said.

Matt laughed. "I don't know either," he said. "It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, though."

After watching the WWE hint at his possible return Jeff wanted nothing more than to actually return to the ring, but his physical therapy was slow and painful process. As the weeks passed and it became obvious that it would be quite awhile before he made his return Jeff began, once again, to try to convince his brother to return before him, but Matt refused. He insisted that Jeff needed him more than the company did at that point and when Jeff was so sore from therapy that he didn't want to do anything when he got him, he privately agreed.

The months passed by without anything out of the ordinary happening. Matt and Jeff fell into a comfortable routine with the high points of each week being watching wrestling and the low points being Jeff's physical therapy. When Jeff reached the point where he no longer needed to go to physical therapy he was ecstatic, hoping that that meant that he would be able to wrestle again soon, but Dr. Carleson told him that that wouldn't be the case. Although he wouldn't have physical therapy anymore he still needed to do a serious of exercises everyday to strengthen his back muscles and he would have to report back to Dr. Carleson every two weeks to see how that was progressing.

Jeff was not in a good mood after getting that news. He hadn't realized that even after his physical therapy ended he wouldn't be able to wrestle again right away. He hated feeling like he was able to make his grand return but constantly being told that he couldn't, that he wasn't ready. He worked harder than he had before to strengthen his muscles, hoping and praying that his doctor would finally tell him that he could make his return, but that day had yet to come.

He watched as on Raw Jericho announced that he had slipped his own message in among the others, hinting that it was still possible that Jeff and/or the Undertaker could still return. He watched as the Shawn and Orton feud expanded to encompass Jericho as well while on both brands the cryptic messages continued. Finally, the day came when the Undertaker made his return and the messages played for the last time. Jeff would've gone completely crazy at that point, but he had been expecting the messages to stop soon, since the day before he had gotten possibly the best news of his life.

"Jeff, your back has healed completely," Dr. Carleson told him during one of his routine check-ups. "I can't see any reason why you can't return to the WWE, beyond my concerns that your back could be injured again."

Jeff stared at him, completely shocked. He had been waiting for this day for months but now that it had finally come he didn't know what to say. He had finally been given permission to return to the ring when, at one point, he didn't even think he would ever walk again. How was he supposed to react to that? What was he supposed to say?

"I can think of one reason why he can't return," Matt said, a small smirk on his face. Jeff turned to stare at his brother, completely confused as to what he was talking about. Matt saw the confusion on his face and laughed. "Jeff, you haven't wrestled in over nine months. Were you honestly expecting to just waltz down to the ring on Monday and go back like nothing had changed?"

And so phase two of his recovery began. He had gotten medical clearance to return but now he needed Matt clearance; he needed to convince his brother that he could still wrestle after a back surgery and nine months without doing anything. They worked in the ring Matt had set up in his back yard, running through the basics at first just to get Jeff used to everything again, before moving on to more complex moves. Matt may have been overprotective of his brother but in the ring he was strictly business. He knew that people were only going to go easy on Jeff's back, but were otherwise going to go all out on him so he did the same.

They also worked on Jeff's signature moves, especially making sure that his back could stand up to a Swanton or two in a match without him being in too much pain. It had been a Swanton that had caused all of his problems; neither of them wanted to find out in an actual match that his back couldn't handle a Swanton anymore. They had Dr. Carleson check out his back again after a day of practicing his Swanton, Whisper in the Wind, and Twist of Fate. Luckily the doctor didn't find anything wrong with his back, even after the stress that had been put on it.

One day after they were done running through things Matt handed his cell phone to Jeff.

"What's this for?" He asked as he took it.

"So you can call headquarters and let them know you're ready to return," Matt said, grinning madly at his brother. As much as he hated the thought of Jeff risking possible paralysis in order to wrestle again, he knew that he couldn't keep him away from the ring anymore. He had gotten used to wrestling again and his back could handle it. It was time for the Hardyz to make their return.

XXXXX

"Jericho, you and I seem to have a bit of a problem right now," Orton said, pacing slightly in the ring. "You seem to think that you're supposed to be fighting Shawn and not me. This wouldn't bother me too much, but when you continuously interrupt my matches in order to attack Shawn... well, I have a problem with that."

"Break the walls down!" echoed in the arena as Jericho walked out, unfazed by the boos he was getting from the crowd. He walked calmly down to the ring, pausing only to grab a microphone. "Orton, see, the thing is I have a couple of things I still need to settle with Shawn," he began. "You may have won the right to fight him before, but that was nearly nine months ago. I was fighting Shawn for a good reason, to prove to the world that Shawn was nothing. You? You're fighting him because he's defending Jeff Hardy, the loser whose career has been over for months!"

The opening lines of "Sexy Boy" began to play as Shawn walked out. Unlike the other two, though, he didn't go down to the ring; he stayed at the top of the ramp as he began to talk. "See, its bad enough I need to tell this to Randy down there every week, so please, Chris, don't make a habit out of bringing this up. Jeff Hardy-"

"No one gives a damn about Jeff Hardy!" Orton yelled. "You come out here every week insisting that Jeff's career isn't over, but we haven't seen or heard from him since I put him on the shelf months ago! So unless you have proof that he's returning, why don't you shut up and-"

The lights went out in the arena, causing the crowd to go wild. It was the start of the cryptic messages that had appeared months ago, though after Undertaker's return they had stopped playing. Everyone knew what was coming next and they couldn't wait.

"Don't act like you know what you're talking about…" The Titantron lit up, showing the words "Figure it out yet?" The Jericho message and the Undertaker message appeared on the screen, only to be replaced with "…they were all the correct answer". That message disappeared from the screen with "His career still lives" displayed on the Titantron as a massive amount of pyros went off and Jeff's music started playing.

Orton and Jericho stared in shock as both Matt and Jeff Hardy came out and stood on either side of Shawn, talking quietly with him for a moment before all three men looked down at the ring. As if on cue they ran down to the ring, with Jeff reaching it just ahead of the others. He dove in and began attacking Orton, with Matt soon joining him and Shawn taking care of Jericho, quickly throwing him over the top rope.

Matt and Jeff threw Orton into a corner with Matt then setting up for a Poetry in Motion. Jeff landed the move and Orton stumbled forward, only to get hit with a Twist of Fate by Matt. As Orton was lying in the ring, Jeff climbed up to the top turn buckle. He paused only for a moment to look around, a wild grin on his face, before he jumped off and landed it perfectly.

The Hardyz were finally back and nothing could stop them now.


End file.
